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EXCHANGE 
JUL; Lae syle 


ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


BY 
RHYS CARPENTER. 


SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS 
FOR THE DEGREE OF Doctor or PHILOSOPHY, IN THE 


FacuLty oF PHILOSOPHY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 


ARCHIVES OF PHILOSOPHY 
EDITED BY 
FREDERICK J. E. WOODBRIDGE 


No. 7, May, 1916 


Rew Bork 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
1916 


“THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 


SALES AGENTS 


New YORK: 


LEMCKE & BUECHNER 
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THE 


ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


BY 
RHYS CARPENTER 


SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS 
FOR THE DEGREE OF DocTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, IN THE 


Facuutty oF PHILOSOPHY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 


ARCHIVES OF PHILOSOPHY 


EDITED BY 
FREDERICK J. E. WOODBRIDGE 


No. 7, May, 1916 


j2ew Work 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
1916 


Copyright, 1916 


By CoLumB1A UNIVERSITY PRESS 


Printed from type, May, 1916 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


CHAPTER I 


τὸ δὲ φυᾷ κράτιστον ἅπαν. “ Nature’s way is ever the strongest and 
best,” wrote Pindar in his ninth Olympian ode.’ Like much of his 
teaching, the aphorism has more earnestness than originality. Indeed, 
it is as a commonplace of Greek conviction that I have chosen it as my 
starting-point and text. If it were possible to comprise in one short 
sentence the essential differences of the Greek genius from that of other 
nations and of modern times, Pindar might claim to have come near to 
that achievement. For there is an entire world —an entire Greek 
world — of meaning in φυᾷ. It implies that the Greek standard, the 
ethical and physical sanction, is not drawn from a supra-mundane or 
transcendental source, but from the physical world as it is or as it tends 
to be. 

τὸ δὲ φυᾷ κράτιστον ἅπαν. Hence, in logic, the Platonic theory of ideas, 
inasmuch as the idea can be defined as that form of any infima species 
which is wholly and perfectly φυᾷ. The logical concept to the Greeks 
had always a curious concreteness. It was not an abstraction so much 
as a formal visualisation of the object in its complete and perfect state. 
Hence that curious dualism in Plato, — a world of objects, and a world 
of ideas which always threatened to be objects also. τὸ δὲ φυᾷ κράτιστον 
ἅπαν: the ideas were the objects φυᾷ, and as such they had a particular 
κράτος or δύναμις, a driving power directing these material counterparts 
toward the perfection which should be theirs by nature. 

In sculpture, that strange early development through a very limited 
number of fixed types is common to most early art, inasmuch as differ- 
entiation is a late acquirement. But note that the types did not stag- 
nate into conventions, as seems to have happened occasionally in Egypt 
and many Oriental countries. The sculptor was never satisfied with his 
heritage, because he felt very vividly, “τὸ φυᾷ κράτιστον ἅπαν." Fifth- 
century athletic art is an amazing blend of geometric formalism and 
realistic observation: the former (inherited from the archaic schema) 


: 1 ΟἹ. ix. 107. 


336063 


2 THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


- 


gives it the so-called classic regularity and “‘suppression”’ of unessen- 
tials; the realism saves it from conventionalisation. Greek art is a 
spiritual interpretation of the physical. But what that phrase means, 
only those will understand who realise that the generations of sculptors 
were studying the nude athlete in order to find that schema toward 
which Nature is striving without ever a perfect attainment. They 
worked toward the human form φυᾷ, the bodily εἶδος, and not toward 
a mere counterpart of this Olympic athlete here and now. It is the 
bare truth to call Greek sculpture Platonic, in spite of all Plato’s 
strictures on art. The canonic statue of an athlete is the visible 
presentation of the Platonic Idea of the athlete. Both are imagi- 
nary, yet deduced from reality, from the multitudinous members of 
the species, each of which is more or less completely φυᾷ. Greek sculp- 
ture was thus for long confined by the demands of a strict develop- 
ment toward a logical concept. For that reason, in comparison with 
modern art, it impresses the unspecialized as strangely limited in imagi- 
nativeness, or, better, in that particular quality of imaginative suggest- 
iveness which may be termed phantasy, whose stimulus is through strong 
emotional vagueness. Maxfield Parrish’s scenes from Greek mythology, 
for instance, or Gilbert Murray’s reimbodiments of Euripidean tragedy, 
are full of this modern appeal, of which Hellenic art knows so little. 
Compare these two versions (both of them in my judgment good 
poetry): 
. ἐμὲ δὲ πόντιον σκάφος 
ἀίσσον πτεροῖσι πορεύσει 
ἱππόβοτον ἤΛργος, ἵνα τείχεα 


λάϊνα Κυκλώπι᾽ οὐράνια νέμονται. 
(Tro. 1085-8) 


{{ 


. . and me the ships 

Shall bear o’er the bitter brine, 
Storm-birds upon angry pinions, 

Where the towers of the Giants shine 

O’er Argos cloudily, 

And the riders ride by the sea.” 


In the Greek, every picture is single and concise, and refers to places 
and conditions actually known to the hearers. In the English, the whole 
effect counts upon vague pictures, indefinite plurals, unfamiliar places, 
and unknown men. 

It has been suggested to me that I am wrong in entirely denying to 
the Greek this sense of imaginative appeal and that, for example, we 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 3 


derive a very modern emotional stimulus from the vase-painting of 
the morning-stars who dive through the clouds at the approach of 
the sun.” 

I might, of course, plead that an instance so unique is eloquent of 
the prevalence of the opposite condition. But I am inclined rather to 
question the validity of the example; for, were the mythology as much 
a commonplace to us as to the Greeks, the illustration of the stars as 
youths would have no more imaginative stimulus than a statue of Apollo 
as a young man. I mean that there are no vague suggestions, no half- 
lights nor lowering shadows, such as the Romanticists and the Celt- 
icists have made familiar. For, all these effects are obtained by a play 
on Nature, a suppression, a distortion, an exaggeration, an innuendo 
of the unusual and mysterious, a trick of the half-seen, the imperfect. 
But if to the Greek τὸ φυᾷ κράτιστον ἅπαν, then art is at its best when it 
is at its most precise. And thus, in its most serious and noble work, 
instead of imaginative surprises with their unbalanced emphasis, there 
is the strictest subordination of every element in its just and logical 
position. I do not believe that the specialist in Greek art will dispute 
the real tyranny of this almost logical formulation; yet, for additional 
support, a reference may be permitted to the Pythagorean-like formalism 
in such strangely arithmetical creatures as the “canons.” Greek archi- 
tecture and apparently certain periods of Greek sculpture placed an 
almost fanatical trust in the efficacy of pure numerical ratio, and when 
Diogenes Laertius says of the sculptor Pythagoras of Rhegium that he 
was the first to use συμμετρία, I hold it obvious that the word cannot 
be translated “symmetry,” but refers to the observance of arith- 
metical ratios between the various physical members. Derived, as this 
procedure seems to have been, from mathematico-physical and musical 
speculations on Nature’s supposed inherent preference for simple nu- 
merical ratios,’ it reveals the Greek artist in an effort to catch Nature’s 
own ideal and to show in stone that which is perfectly φυᾷ. 

Again, in Greek ethical thought, Pindar’s gnome finds a wide appli- 
cation. Since conclusions here are especially open to challenge as hasty 
or superficial impressions, I make a more exhaustive appeal to particu- 
lars, in order to show that Pindar’s gnome is the key-note to Euripides’ 
morality and that the logical concept is quite as dominant there as in 
Greek sculpture. To be sure, one can scarcely demand a rigorous proof 


5. Furtwangler-Reichhold-Hauser, Griechische Vasenmalerei, III, pl. 126. 
3. Cf. Arist. de Caelo. F. 1. 300a 16. ἔνιοι yap τὴν φύσιν ἐξ ἀριθμῶν συνιστᾶσιν, 
ὥσπερ τῶν Πυθαγορείεων τινές. Cf. also Arist. Met. A. ch. 5. 


1 THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


extracted from a dramatist, who by profession holds up his mirror to 
a changeful and inconsistent world. And yet, as I hope to show, his 
ethic has in reality just this rigor, if one but apprehend the ἀνυπόθετος 
ἀρχή, the self-sufficient and self-evident principle from which all his 
specific rules of conduct are deducible. 

If one reads Euripides with this in view, the plays seem to conspire 
to emphasise a certain single ethical principle. This they exemplify in 
its different applications to the stuff of tragedy and human life. In fact 
this principle is so insistent, so explanatory of the meaning of the plays, 
that it runs like a forma informans through Euripides’ dramas, as 
effective in his moral thought as-symmetry was in the work of the 
sculptor of pediments or isocephalism for the early designer of relief. 

The principle of which I am speaking is a tacit assumption at the 
back of Greek ethic generally and is its source of moral sanction. Pre- 
cisely because it is basic it is seldom found expressed in Greek writers. 
But though the fundamental postulates of a nation’s way of thought 
are not expressed, because they are never seen against a contrasting 
background, yet every honest utterance betrays them. 

For the ethical principle in question, one may assume some variant 
of Pindar’s gnome, such as, τὸ ζῆν κατὰ φύσιν ἐστὶν εὖ ζῆν An English 
equivalent for the phrase can scarcely be said to exist. For that reason, 
and because clarity in terms is vital for my thesis, a more detailed 
analysis of the wording is essential. 


φύσις is the world in which we are; not, however, the world as a 
haphazard congeries of matter, but as a great ordered system of organic 
things in growth, attained development, and decay. The world must 
be realised to be under law, before φύσις can be understood. The various 
kinds of plants differ from one another: they have different φύσις. The 
laws of growth keep them relentlessly to their own development, their 
own nature. A rose differs from a violet because of φύσις. But one rose 
differs also from another rose. No two members of an ultima species 
are precisely alike. What is it that makes them different? Scarcely 
their φύσις, for the φύσις of a rose is always the same. There are other 
forces at work, and these operate against the φύσις, they are rapa φύσιν. 
If everything in this world were strictly κατὰ φύσιν, every rose would be 
like every other one and all alike would be perfect roses. Unhampered 
φύσις would develop every nascent organism into a perfect exemplifica- 
tion of its type, its εἶδος. The type or εἶδος is a static conception; φύσις 


4 Cf. Diog. Laert. viii. 87. διόπερ τέλος γίνεται τὸ ἀκολούθως τῇ φύσει ζῆν. 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 5 


is dynamic, it is the complex of laws by which everything tends to attain 
its εἶδος. 

A good rose must have, let us say, its full quota of petals. The 
literal moth and the figurative rust must not have worked it harm. It 
must have had sun and rain. φύσις must have had full play, that from 
the seed it might develop stalk and leaf and bud and perfect flower. 
Only so can it attain its full type, its εἶδος. A good rose is a perfect 
rose. It is wholly κατὰ φύσιν. 

Man is in a hike position. Only, with him, development is not 
mere physical growth. The whole complex of mental and spiritual 
powers must expand and increase to their perfect form. Yet we can say 
of him what we said of the rose. As a good rose is a perfect rose, so a 
good man is a perfect man. He must be wholly κατὰ φύσιν. He must, 
under the unobstructed action of φύσις, attain his εἶδος as material or- 
ganism, as sentient animal, and as thinking man. In so far as he exerts 
his powers to further this action of φύσις, he is acting rightly; in so far 
as he thwarts φύσις, he is acting wrongly. 

Back of such an attitude of the Greek mind there must have been 
an extraordinary sense for the community between man and the rest 
of the material world. The modern mind opposes itself to Nature. 
With our artificialities of living and thinking, our exotic scientific diver- 
sion of natural forces, we feel that we dominate her. The supremacy 
of Mind marks us out from our surroundings: we feel like powerful 
strangers from another planet who have seized upon this earth, thanks 
to our unterrestrial sagacity. The Greek could not have felt so. He 
was part of the natural world, as plants and animals were part of it, 
though with a more intimate insight because of his part in its intel- 
lectual aspect. To such a people it is not a great imaginative and 
poetic flight to feel that man is like the flowers of the field. It is 
merely a simple statement of an obvious truth. 

Secondly, the Greek must have had a keen eye for formal perfection 
and have realized that every organism under favourable conditions 
develops a product which has a formal, as well as a purely material, 


5 But it is also the matter upon which that εἶδος is formed. Burnet in his recent 
book, Greek Philosophy from Thales to Plato, justly emphasises this aspect of the 
meaning of the word in the vocabulary of a slightly earlier period. (Cf. 0. c. p. 27.) 

6 I do not mean that he was the care-free child of nature, the pastoral fiction of Ὁ 
an 18th century imagination. Minds like that of Aeschylus, who was thoroughly 
Greek, are a sufficient contradiction to such generalities. But there is an ultimate 
Verséhnung, not an ultimate opposition, between man and the high mysteries of 
Nature. ἄτη acts παρὰ φύσιν and its catastrophe is so best explained. 


6 THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


significance. Nature, we might say, has a love of pure form. (Not 
that she displays a conscious aesthetic interest: there may be very 
simple reasons why Nature tends toward a formal articulation. For 
one thing, it is probably mechanically easier: at least, symmetry is 
mathematically simpler than asymmetry.) Rather, I wish to empha- 
sise the mere empirical fact that Nature constantly strives toward a 
formal expression. The botanist, the zoologist, the biologist knows 
this. The Greek seems to have been peculiarly sensitive to it. 

There results a certain optimistic confidence in Nature. Unthwarted 
φύσις produces, as far as form goes, superior and more perfect products. 
Thwart Nature, and consider the undergrown or crippled or uneven 
results. Formally, they are far inferior. But give the rose its proper 
soil and dew and sunlight, and the perfect form appears; and give to 
men the soil of individual freedom, the dew of material self-sufficiency, 
and the sunlight of good fortune, and they likewise will attain their 
formal and natural perfection. 

A gardener working in a sandy and barren soil would not be prone to 
emphasise this striving toward form. His flowers would all be im- 
perfect, with stunted stem, uneven leaf, and ill-developed blossom. So 
amid the misery of the ghetto, the rabble of the dusty streets of Alex- 
andria, or the ill-fed slave-hordes of imperial Rome, in certain more 
unfavorable periods, the Greek doctrine would have little meaning and 
make little appeal. But the Greeks of the Euripidean age were an indi- 
vidualistic aristocracy. From their slave-tilled soil they sprang up 
independent and self-sufficient. Inside their city-fatherland, they had 
leisure and immunity enough to develop themselves physically and spir- 
itually. To such a people the doctrine had application, and for them its 
significance was self-evident. Only under such conditions can a purely 
individualistic code of ethics succeed. Only there can there be the be- 
lief — which was the Greek belief — that the best life is the life of 
self-development into the perfect natural norm, the life κατὰ φύσιν. 

It is important to realise how completely such an ethical principle 
would be misinterpreted by the people of to-day. Self-development is 
not self-aggrandisement. But many modern nations have lost the 
sense for form and substituted a sense for size. They have been rightly 
taunted with treating everything quantitatively, and many men to-day 
hold an individualistic creed which prompts them to believe that the 
more they have of the good things of the world, the better it is for them. 
Metaphorically, we have ceased to know that, though rain is good 
for the rose, the water-floods of Noah cannot benefit it. Nature, to 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES i, 


attain her end, must have her necessities in right quantities. Too much 
is often as disastrous as too little. To develop ourselves to the perfect 
norm, we need, not as much of everything as possible, but just so much 
as is consonant with the particular demands of our particular nature. 

It is easy to see that this is true of the simpler organisms such as 
plants and animals. Overfeeding and underfeeding are both bad be- 
cause both are contrary to natural requirements, — they are παρὰ 
φύσιν. Both produce in the affected organism a departure from the 
true norm, a formal distortion, and a consequent imperfect state. It 
is not hard to see that, in man likewise, the physical part is in a similar 
condition, that under-exercise or over-eating’ are detrimental. Yet 
we now-a-days feel our impaired state of health to be a sin against 
good judgment rather than against morality. But the best Greeks of 
the Polykleitan age, with their peculiar attitude toward athletics, would 
have felt it to be an offence against that formal perfection of the human 
body which is for man the only physical state worthy of his aspiration. 

Compare the Polykleitan Doryphoros with the Herakles Farnese of 
a later and other age. The one is physical perfection, the other is physi- 
cal exaggeration. The history of early Peloponnesian sculpture is little 
else than the gradual evolution of the completely and harmoniously 
developed type of the male human body. The slow-yielding stone 
bears record to that incessant striving of the Greek to allow Nature her 
formally wonderful self-expression, which prompted him to Olympian 
festivals wherein the victory was not merely a glorification of muscle 
and sinew, but also the visible triumph of human φύσις that had realized 
her εἶδος. 

Because he was so sensitive to this formal perfection which is 
Nature’s successful self-expression, it was apparently an inevitable con- 
sequence that the Greek applied to everything the standard of mate- 
rial form. He saw spiritual problems as it were from a physical point of 
view. Man’s spiritual growth was somehow similar to that material 
growth whose athletic perfection the Greek so greatly loved. To one and 
the other, the same general laws applied. The athletic training-school 
reappeared as a spiritual paedeutic. Man’s thinking and volitional 
nature must be formed by exercise into a natural state of health and 
strength. The sophists and rhetors were but athletic trainers in the 
palaestra of thought. The Greek youth learned to wrestle intellec- 
tually not primarily for display or gain, but because only so was the 


7 Kuripides’ polemic against athletes is in itself a protest against the professional 
vulgarisation of this high athletic ideal (and not against the ideal itself). (Fr. 284). 


8 THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


intellectual body, with all its sinews of reason and knowledge, brought 
into its proper state of health. So only could the intellectual φύσις 
realise its εἶδος fully. 

Compare again the Polykleitan Doryphoros and the Herakles Far- 
nese. Think of them, however, as an allegory of man’s intellectual and 
spiritual self. The Doryphoros gives us the classic Greek ideal: through 
self-denial if necessary, through constant energy, and unfailing self- 
attention, all the spiritual powers are developed in harmony with each 
other until they give the fullest expression to that balanced and per- 
fect type toward which Nature always strives, but which she can attain 
only if the individual himself will aid her. All the right conditions must 
be there, before the rose at last unfolds its petals and displays the per- 
fect flower, —a wholly natural product, this flawless plant, and yet 
in nature how rare! 

It is a creed which is absolutely individualistic and self-centred; 
but it involves both devotion and painful energy. Selfishness and self- 
aggrandisement produce a spiritual Herakles Farnese. It needs an 
intense training, a deep feeling for spiritual φύσις, a sense of moderation 
and restraint in mental diet and immaterial exercise, before the per- 
fected form, the spiritual Doryphoros, can emerge. It is not a doctrine 
of self-indulgence. But far less is it a doctrine of self-suppression. It 
is the precise opposite: it is self-expression by unwearying attention 
to the ways of that universal nature which guides plants and animals 
through their wonderful growth toward that completed individual 
form which they all attain in some measure, but which only those attain 
fully and perfectly for whom all the conditions are right. Ethics is the 
study of these conditions in the case of the human organism. The pur- 
suit of these conditions is at once right conduct and the highest individual 
good. “To live in the norm of nature is to live rightly and well”: 
τὸ ζῆν κατὰ φύσιν ἐστὶν εὖ ζῆν. 

This general attitude toward existence was so deep-rooted in the 
Greek mind that it became a unifying principle for all his ethical thought. 
From it, deliberately or instinctively, he drew his moral sanction. Like 
“ revealed word of God,” or “‘ innate consciousness of right and wrong,” 
it gave a starting-point outside of the individual and independent of 
his subjective vagaries. 

How thoroughly it interpenetrated Greek moral thought I intend 
to show by an examination of Euripides.’ By constant appeal to his 


§ I have thus far given no references in support of my view, because so general 
an attitude must be based not merely on the whole of Greek literature, but on 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 9 


dramas I hope to emphasise the fact that some of the striking differ- 
ences between the Greek and Christian attitude toward moral ques- 
tions are largely due to this initial divergence in the source of Moral 
Sanction. I wish to show how far the Euripidean ethic proves itself 
consistent, when once its fundamental proposition is adopted. I mean,\ 
further, to suggest that the Aristotelian ethic is largely a prose statement, 
helped out by a certain quantity of logical fermentation, of what the 
tragic stage inculecated into Athenian audiences; and that the service 
of Aristotle in his famous Nicomachean Ethics was not so much that of 
creating a system of ethics as of supplying a logical and psychological 
framework for an otherwise highly developed and intelligently thought- 
out morality. Indeed, we should expect this to be true, on the general 
ground that the moral philosophers are largely engaged in rationalising 
the convictions of their fellow-men; so that it would be strange indeed 
if so intellectual and so ethical a product as the Greek drama had not 
already uttered all the fundamental tenets of the Nicomachean Ethics. 
But it is one thing to suspect a truth and another thing to prove it in 
its specific exemplification. In the following chapters, accordingly, I 
have gone into the logical detail of the Euripidean ethic, championed 
its simplicity and its rationality, and tried to show both how highly it 
is developed and how little change is necessary to cast it in obvious 
Aristotelian form. 
Greek art and life as well. Euripides himself uses the actual word φύσις sparingly, 
perhaps in no case in order to give expression to a definite ethical teaching. I believe 
that the quotations from Euripides, which follow, will give ample corroboration for 
this introductory chapter; but from the nature of the subject, the evidence must 
be cumulative rather than specific. 

I might, however, refer to the extraordinary frequency with which moral evil 
is spoken of as disease or sickness, to show how intimately the Greek mind connected 
the physical and the ethical. νόσος is a violation of φύσις in its physical aspect: moral 


evil is a similar malady in conduct. I add a few instances of this usage. It would 
be easy to treble the list: Fr. 227; 294; 431; 609; Hipp. 730. 


CHAPTER II 


WE may ask ourselves how the individual is to know this norm of 
nature which Greek morality bids him follow. He will know it, in out- 
line at least, from his early training. Presupposing that his teachers 
already understand this norm, its principles can be firmly imbedded in 
his childhood mind at an age when he could otherwise have no grasp 
of it. Right training is thus of the greatest ethical importance, and it 
is not surprising to see Euripides frequently emphasising its value. 

Thus Fragment 926: 


Tats ὧν φυλάσσου πραγμάτων αἰσχρῶν aro’ 
ὡς ἢν τραφῇ τις μὴ κακῶς, αἰσχύνεται 

ἀνὴρ γενόμενος αἰσχρὰ δρᾶν νέος δ᾽ ὅταν 
πόλλ᾽ ἐξαμάρτῃ, τὴν ἁμαρτίαν ἔχει 


εἰς γῆρας αὑτοῦ τοῖς τρόποισιν ἔμφυτον. ἷ 


In the Suppliants,” Adrastus lauds the great warriors who fell in battle 
before the gates of Thebes. After recounting their individual worth and 
valour, he praises the good training which set such courage in their souls: 


TO γὰρ τραφῆναι μὴ κακῶς αἰδῶ φέρει" 
αἰσχύνεται δὲ τἀγάθ᾽ ἀσκήσας ἀνὴρ 
κακὸς γενέσθαι πᾶς τις. ἡ δ᾽ εὐανδρία 
διδακτός, εἴπερ καὶ βρέφος διδάσκεται 
λέγειν ἀκούειν θ᾽ ὧν μάθησιν οὐκ ἔχει. 
ἃ δ᾽ ἂν μάθῃ τις, ταῦτα σῴζεσθαι φιλεῖ 
πρὸς γῆρας. οὕτω παῖδας εὖ παιδεύετε. 
(Hik. 911-17) 
Hekabe, in the play of that name, remarks that the good are ever good 
and the bad are ever bad, and wonders to what cause this may be due: 
ap’ οἱ τεκόντες διαφέρουσιν ἢ τροφαί; 
ἔχει γε μέντοι καὶ τὸ θρεφθῆναι καλῶς 
δίδαξιν ἐσθλοῦ" τοῦτο δ᾽ ἤν τις εὖ μάθῃ, 
oldev τό γ᾽ αἰσχρόν, κανόνι τοῦ καλοῦ μαθών. 
(Hek. 599-602) 


1 The extant plays are quoted from Gilbert Murray’s edition, in the Oxford 
Classical Texts, and the Fragments from the latest Teubner text (ed. Nauck).. 
2 Hik. 857-917. 
10 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES ΝῊ 


A further instance occurs in the Iphigeneia in Aulis: 


KuyTAIMEsTRA: Who trained Achilles, Thetis or his father? 
AGAMEMNON: ’T'was Cheiron lest he learn bad tricks of mortals. 
KuyTaAIMEstrA: Ah, wise the trainer; but the father, wiser. 

(I. A. 708-10) ὃ 


But though for the individual this training in the norm of nature may be 
practicable and to a certain extent sufficient, it of course does not solve 
the ethical problem raised at the beginning of this chapter. How is 
man to learn the norm of Nature which it is his duty and highest 
good to follow ? 

The physical norm can be learned by experience and trial. The rules 
of the athletic training-school are empiric in their origin. The right 
amount of exercise, of food, of sleep, can be ascertained by experiment. 
The same is true of man’s spiritual activities. We may violate the norm 
by excess or by defect; but if we are attentive to the results, we shall 
learn at last the due amount. The “golden mean” is thus an empiric 
rule. Our reason gives us merely the rule in all its generality, telling 
us that, since we are natural organisms, we must fit ourselves as com- 
pletely as possible to Nature’s requirements, and that, since we may 
err either by too much or by too little, our aim must be to discover the 
norm between excess and defect. Such advice is excellent, but not 
specific. In every part of conduct, in every act, we must pause and ask 
ourselves, ““ What does φύσις here require? Where is that balance be- 
tween too much and too little, which is the perfect requirement and 
condition of Nature? ” 

This is the difficulty of Greek ethics. The fundamental principle 
must be elaborated in every part of life, in all the emotions and intel- 
lectual conditions, in every portion of the system of human conduct. 
Only if it can be shown to be true without exception, to be as infallible 
in practice as it is plausible in theory, only then can it be proclaimed 
a great and necessary principle of living. It is only then that we are 
justified in considering it as it were the ethical spine which makes a 
coherent and organic articulation out of what would otherwise be merely 
an invertebrate mass of precepts. 


In the Hippolytos, Phaidra’s nurse — a prosaic soul full of middle- 
class wisdom — appeals to the seven sages: ἢ 
3 Cf. the chorus in the same play, 11. 561-2. 


4 If this inference to the Wise Men may be made from the collocation of the 
familiar μηδὲν ἄγαν and the suggestive σοφοί. 


12 THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


οὕτω τὸ λίαν ἧσσον ἐπαινῶ 
τοῦ μηδὲν ἄγαν" 


καὶ ξυμφήσουσι σοφοί μοι. 
(Hipp. 264-6) 


Nihil nimium (or, in Terence’s phrase, ut ne quid nimis) ,5 is a corner- 
stone for conduct because: 


βροτοῖς Ta μείζω τῶν μέσων τίκτει νόσους. 
(Fragment 80) 


The plays, in fact, are full of warnings against excess. But it is the 
specific application of the general rule which Euripides never wearies 
of emphasising and exemplifying. And, as we saw, an empiric rule 
must offer precisely this proof in detail. I give, under various headings, 
passages in Euripides to show the poet’s thoroughgoing crusade for 
moderation in conduct. 

1. In courage and fear, the evil of excess: 


μὴ τὰ κινδυνεύματα 
αἰνεῖτ᾽ " ἔγὼ γὰρ οὔτε ναυτίλον φιλῶ 
τολμῶντα λίαν οὔτε προστάτην χθονός. 
(Fragment 194) 
Tas τῶν θεῶν yap ὅστις ἐκμοχθεῖ τύχας, 
πρόθυμός ἐστιν, ἡ προθυμία δ᾽ ἄφρων. 
(ΗΕ. Μ. 809-10) 
The evil of defect: 


δειλοὶ yap ἄνδρες οὐκ ἔχουσιν ἐν μάχῃ 
ἀριθμόν, ἀλλ᾽ ἄπεισι κἂν παρῶσ᾽ ὅμως. 

(Fragment 523) 

. τοὺς πόνους yap ayabol 
τολμῶσι, δειλοὶ δ᾽ εἰσὶν οὐδὲν οὐδαμοῦ. 
(I. T. 114-15) 

ὁ δ᾽ ἡδὺς αἰὼν ἡ κακή τ᾽ ἀνανδρία 
οὔτ᾽ οἶκον οὔτε πόλιν ἀνορθώσειεν ἄν. 

(Fragment 241) 

Praise of the right amount of courage: 


νεανίαν yap ἄνδρα χρὴ τολμᾶν ἀεί" 

οὐδεὶς yap ὧν ράθυμος εὐκλεὴς ἀνήρ, 

ἀλλ᾽ οἱ πόνοι τίκτουσι τὴν εὐανδρίαν. 

; (Fragment 239) 
5 Andria, 61. 
6 E.g. Med. 127-8; Phoin. 539-42; 554; 584; Fr. 80; 628, 1. 4; 964. 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 13 


φεύγειν μὲν οὖν χρὴ πόλεμον ὅστις εὖ φρονεῖ" 
εἰ δ᾽ ἐς τόδ᾽ ἔλθοι, στέφανος οὐκ αἰσχρὸς πόλει 
καλῶς ὀλέσθαι, μὴ καλῶς δὲ δυσκλεές.ἵ 
(Kasandra in Tro. 400-3) 
Praise of the right amount of fear: 
. οὐκ αἰνῶ φόβον, 
ὕστις φοβεῖται μὴ διεξελθὼν λόγῳ, 

(Tro. 1165-6) 
implying that reason should determine the due extent to which fear is 
justified. 

2. So, in general mental and physical activity, those who are over- 
energetic and those who love the life of inglorious ease are both at fault. 
Somewhere between the two extremes runs the course of right conduct: 

ὁ πλεῖστα πράσσων Teich’ ἁμαρτάνει βροτῶν. 
(Fragment 580) 
In the lost play Philoktetes, Odysseus speaks of his own folly in striving 
for cunning and wisdom beyond due measure: 
πῶς δ᾽ ἂν φρονοίην, ᾧ παρῆν ἀπραγμόνως 
ἐν τοῖσι πολλοῖς ἠριθμημένῳ στρατοῦ 
ἴσον μετασχεῖν τῷ σοφωτάτῳ τύχης; 
(Fragment 785) 
Similarly, the other extreme is wrong: 
. τίς δ᾽ ἄμοχθος εὐκλεής; 
τίς τῶν μεγίστων δειλὸς ὧν ὠρέξατο; 
(From Fragment 242) 
. εἰ δ᾽ ἄτερ πόνων 


δοκεῖς ἔσεσθαι, μῶρος εἶ, θνητὸς γεγώς. 
(Fragment 396) 


The right amount in energy and activity is alone right, and this is 
either energy as opposed to laziness: 


2 la t 3 , Δ᾽ ” tal 
ἐκ τῶν πόνων τοι τἀγάθ᾽ αὔξεται βροτοῖς, 
(From Fragment 366) 


μοχθεῖν ἀνάγκη τοὺς θέλοντας εὐτυχεῖν, 
(Fragment 719) 
or else self-restraint as opposed to over-activity: 


ὁ δ᾽ ἥσυχος φίλοισί τ᾽ ἀσφαλὴς φίλος 
πόλει τ᾽ ἄριστος. .. .3 

(From Fragment 194) 
7 Cf. also Fr. 304; 420; 437; 745; 1038. 
8 Cf. also Fr. 241 and the almost identical lines in 366. 
9 Cf. also Fr. 235; 238; 464; 477; 745; mainly praising energy. 


14 THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


The apparent inconsistency in these three fragments vanishes only if 
we recognise that the first two praise the mean as opposed to the defect, 
while the third praises the mean as opposed to the excess. 

3. The doctrine of the mean has perhaps its greatest value in man’s 
emotional pursuits, where pleasure and dislike are such powerful factors, 
and where man is, as nowhere else, prone to rush into extremes. It is 
consequently the excess rather than the defect against which man needs 
warning and such passages are more numerous in Euripides than those 
which emphasise the opposite extreme. And yet there is one entire play . 
which has this latter function to perform. I judge that with the Hip- 
polytos Euripides is preaching as usual (but by an unusual example) his 
fundamental ethical doctrine that conduct contrary to nature must end 
in disaster. Hippolytos is insensible to the attraction of love, and be- 
cause he thereby behaves παρὰ φύσιν, the φύσις which he has violated, that 
same power and instinct of love, reacts against him in the person of 
Phaidra and brings about his ruin and his violent death. In confirma- 
tion, there is a fragment from that other and earlier play of the Veiled 
Hippolytos, of which we should so gladly know more. There we read: 


ot yap Κύπριν φεύγοντες ἀνθρώπων ἄγαν 
νοσοῦσ᾽ ὁμοίως τοῖς ἄγαν θηρωμένοις. 
(Fragment 431) 

The Hippolytos is such a brilliant and careful exposition of 
Euripides’ fundamental moral thesis that it is essential for me to ex- 
amine it at greater length. The play has been very generally misappre- 
hended, because the author’s intentions toward Hippolytos have not 
been understood. To a careful reader, who bears our moral thesis in 
mind, it must be abundantly clear that Euripides is not in sympathy 
with Hippolytos, but is strongly censuring an attitude which was prob- 
ably prevalent in his own town of Athens and which strongly recalls 
the aesthetic and other “literary”? movements of the closing years of 
the nineteenth century in England. From his first appearance on the 
stage, a certain preciosity is noticeable in the words of Hippolytos. 
He talks of flowers ἢ and jewelry and maintains an attitude of odi 
profanum vulgus (from whom he is toto caelo distinct).12 He belongs to 
a “set”? ὅσοις διδακτὸν μηδὲν ἀλλ᾽ ἐν τῇ φύσει. (1. 79). To the last he is 
exclusive, and despises the bourgeois gift of demagogic oratory: 

ἐγὼ δ᾽ ἄκομψος εἰς ὄχλον δοῦναι λόγον, 
ἐς ἥλικας δὲ κὠλίγους σοφώτερος. 


(ib. 986-7) 
10 Hipp. 73-8. u 70. 82-3. 12 70. 79-81; 84. 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 15 


He is of the jeunesse dorée who spend time on horses and hunting. These 
very horses cause his undoing. In ancient tragedy the agents of disaster 
are chosen with grim appropriateness. ἀκήρατος,  unsullied,”’ is a favour- 
ite word of his. It has a self-righteous ring, a note of moral arrogance, 
ὕβρις. It turns to injured innocence in 1]. 654-6 where he spurns the 
suggestions of the old nurse, and shows a complete lack of sympathy. 
He is inhuman in his ἀναισθησία. Just this quality in him spurs Phaidra 
to her fatal actions. Bitterly she says, “that he may learn not to be 
high and mighty about my misfortune” (ἵν᾽ εἰδῇ μὴ ᾽πὶ τοῖς ἐμοῖς κακοῖς 
ὑψηλὸς εἶναι) ." 

From his father Theseus we have further light on Hippolytos, who 
is taunted with a bitter reference to his reputation as a superman of 
refinement (περισσὸς ἀνήρ). ἀκήρατος, — unsullied,”’ his favourite word, 
is hurled in his face.'® Apparently Theseus has found his son’s affec- 
tations (κόμποι) hard to endure. He has had to put up with his vege- 
tarianism, religious mysticism, and literary dilettanteism.!? His whole 
speech is the reaction of the normal man against the abnormal. Theseus 
is healthy in mind and body; Hippolytos seems to be neither. It is 
the clash of τὰ κατὰ φύσιν with τὰ παρὰ φύσιν, and the latter must go 
under. Lest the spectator think that the approaching catastrophe is 
accidental or individual, due to casual misunderstanding or spite or 
sudden rage, Euripides makes Theseus declare the universality of his 
attitude. It is not Theseus against Hippolytos, it is the natural 
against the abnormal: 

τοὺς δὲ τοιούτους ἔγὼ 
φεύγειν προφωνῶ Trac.’ 
(955-6) 
τοιούτους and πᾶσι are no longer specific or personal terms. 

Hippolytos defends himself against his father’s charges in a speech 
betraying affectation and self-righteousness.'® He is cwdpwr,!? without 
sexual interest,?° a virgin.” 

οἴμοι, TO σεμνὸν ὥς μ᾽ ἀποκτενεῖ τὸ σόν. 
Oh, how thy holy cant will murder me! 


eries Theseus.*? The same τὸ σεμνόν is one cause of Hippolytos’ undo- 
ing. He was warned against it at the opening of the play by his hunts- 
man.*> But it is ἐν τῇ φύσει. Even when near death, he clings to his 


13 Hipp. 73, 76; cf. 949. 15. 710. 948. 7 Tb, 952-4. 19 70. 995. 

4 Jb. 729-30. 16 70. 949. 18 70. 983 ff. 20 Tb. 1006. 

Ἵ ἄθικτος, 1002. But it must be granted that his ideal in 1016-8 is both a healthy 
and a good one. 2 Tb. 1064. 25. Ib. 91-5. 


10 THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


σεμνὸς ἐγώ." But the last scene is one of reconciliation. Sympathy with 
his father breaks his σεμνότης. In his last words, he becomes at last 
natural and human. He turns against his old life as personified in 
Artemis. (In 1441-3 does he not even seem to suggest that he finds 
her a trifle verbose and tedious?) φύσις has reclaimed him, and Theseus, 
the normal man, weeps for his dying son. 

Of all Hippolytos’ abnormalities, however, the most fatal was his 
complete aversion to love. Aphrodite, speaking the prologue and 
explaining the argument, announced the unvengeful and almost imper- 
sonal retribution of this slighted instinct,?® and Phaidra is declared 
the unwitting victim of the reaction.2’7. The huntsman warns Hippolytos 
of this foree which he spurns;* but without effect. Straightway 
thereafter, love asserts itself in Phaidra’s unhappy struggle. 

With the appearance of Theseus, we realize that slighted love has 
fulfilled its terrible reaction. And now the other charges of abnormality 
are developed against Hippolytos, as explained above. But observe 
that after the death of Hippolytos, when Theseus and Poseidon are alone 
vivid in the spectator’s thoughts, the chorus without a word of transi- 
tion harks back to Aphrodite to whom all this tragedy is ascribed.” 
The mangled Hippolytos is brought upon the stage. He is still unre- 
pentant. When disaster overtook him, amid the turmoil of broken 
wheel and dragging rein, he called himself still “a perfect man” (ἄνδρ᾽ 
ἄριστον, 1242). And now he ascribes his misfortune to inherited guilt.?° 
But Artemis tells him the true cause,*! and Theseus, who closes the 
play, attributes all to Kypris, the power of love.* 

It is a grim spectacle, because all the characters are merely puppets 
playing the great but unequal game of φύσις against τὸ παρὰ φύσιν. But 
just because it is so universal, it is true tragedy and true morality. 
That morality is Greek to the core. 

The Medeia illustrates the opposite extreme. Princess of the royal 
blood of Kolchis, she deserted her land and slew her brother, for love of 
a foreign adventurer. Bitterly she exclaims to Jason, ΤῸ my friends 
at home I made myself a foe, and those whom ne’er I should have 
wronged, for the sake of you I made my enemies!’”’** Endowed with 
strange knowledge, a creature with the sun-god’s passion in her veins 
and sister to the enchantress Kirke, she sacrificed everything for love. 


4 Hipp. 1364. 8 Ib. 88-120. 31 70. 1400 and 1402. 
36. 70. 1405-15. 9.70. 1268-82, 35. 7b. 1461. 
36. Ib. 20-22. 30 Jb. 1379 ff. 33 Med. 506-8. 


1 Ib. 27-28; cf. 47-50. 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 17 


Outraging Nature, she falls a victim to Nature’s recoil. Her wild love 
turns into barbaric hate. She slaughters her own children, and van- 
ishes. The chariot of dragons, on which she disappears, is not more 
strange than she to Nature’s normal ways.** 


4, Passages against excess in pleasure are numerous in Euripides: 


. ἡ φύσις γὰρ οἴχεται 


ὅταν γλυκείας ἡδονῆς ἥσσων τις ἧ. 
(From Fragment 187) 


τὰ χρήστ᾽ ἐπιστάμεσθα Kal γιγνώσκομεν, 
οὐκ ἐκπονοῦμεν δ᾽, οἱ μὲν ἀργίας ὕπο, 
οἱ δ᾽ ἡδονὴν προθέντες ἀντὶ τοῦ καλοῦ 
ἄλλην τιν᾽. 
(Hipp. 380-3) 


ὅταν κακοὶ πράξωσιν, ὦ ξένοι, καλῶς, 
ἄγαν κρατοῦντες KOU νομίζοντες δίκην 


δώσειν ἔδρασαν πάντ᾽ ἐφέντες ἡδονῇ." 
(Fragment 568) 


But though pleasure with its irrational power is in general a danger, 
it is not in itself an evil if man can only enjoy within due bounds. In 
this the Greek differs from much mediaeval Christian doctrine and dis- 
plays an attitude more akin to the modern. With our thought coloured 
by evolutional and biological theory, we judge pleasure as a natural 
appearance, valuable and necessary for man’s maintenance. In just 
the same way the Greek saw pleasure to be “according to nature,” 
a normal and admirable product. The ideal was not to avoid pleasure, 
but to learn how to use it. There is a remark made by Pylades in the 
Iphigeneia in Tauris which may be elevated to a general gnome of this 
Greek attitude toward pleasure: 


σοφῶν yap ἀνδρῶν ταῦτα, μὴ ᾿κβάντας τύχης, 


καιρὸν λαβόντας, ἡδονὰς ἄλλας λαβεῖν." 5 
: (I. T. 907-8) 


34 Perhaps also (as Prof. H. N. Sanders has pointed out to me) the play is a veiled 
protest against the legitimation and naturalisation of the children which Perikles 
had by Aspasia. In that case the appeal is similarly to the plea of παρὰ φύσιν, under 
whose ban legalised international marriage is easily made to fall. 

% Cf. also Fragments 197; 364 (Il. 22-23); 849. 

38 ἄλλας in the Greek idiom is attracted to ἡδονάς. It does not mean “other 
pleasures,”’ but “other things, which are pleasures.” So in Hipp. 383, just above. 


18 THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


Similarly : 
τὸ δ᾽ ἐρᾶν προλέγω τοῖσι νέοισιν 
μήποτε φεύγειν, 
χρῆσθαι δ᾽ ὀρθῶς ὅταν ἔλθῃ, 
(From Fragment 889) 


which, as we have seen, is very much the moral of the entire Hippolytos. 

The self-control which never runs into excess of pleasure is known in 
Greek as sophrosyne. It does not mean abstinence or asceticism, but 
the ability to maintain the mean amid temptations to excess. Conse- 
quently it most frequently has reference to pleasure. But sophrosyne 
is not mere negative restraint. To understand it, we must read the 
Bacchae, a play of first importance for our thesis. I can see no sign that 
the drama is the palinode of an atheist or the apologia of a rationalist,*” 
an old man in exile trying to reconcile himself with popular religion. 
The “orthodox” view seems obviously correct; for Euripides’ own words 
are insistent in its favour. It is nearly the same subject as in the Hip- 
polytos: the Bacchic pleasures and prerogatives — dancing, laughter, 
freedom from care, wine-feasting **— are natural and salutary. To 
treat them with austerity and suppression is therefore not virtue, but 
a violation of nature, and quite strictly παρὰ φύσιν. Hence the fateful 
recoil of these Bacchic elements of life on Pentheus, even as love re- 
~ coiled to work the death of Hippolytos. More than this, man’s φύσις 
includes more than a mere life of reason. All that fine intoxication of 
the spirit, with which poet and votary are so familiar, is not outside of 
Nature’s intent. Euripides would have been turning a weapon against 
himself, were he to admit that poetic enthusiasm is παρὰ φύσιν. Rather, 
its suppression and denial are παρὰ φύσιν, and baleful. Let us be poets 
and Bacchants, since we have it in us! Enjoyed in right amount, 
Dionysos is κατὰ φύσιν and a moral necessity, very different from excess 
or licentiousness as the chorus is careful to point out.®® Nor is it true 
that his rites lead necessarily to dissipation: 


’ e , n~ > / 
οὐχ ὁ Διόνυσος σωφρονεῖν ἀναγκάσει 

an ve Ν lel 
γυναῖκας és τὴν Κύπριν, ἀλλ΄ ἐν τῇ φύσει 


\ a ” ᾽ \ , τ. TAD 
[τὸ σωφρονεῖν ἔνεστιν εἰς τὰ πάντ᾽ ἀεί] 


37 As, among others, Sir John Sandys would have us believe in his edition of the 
play (Cambridge, 1900, Introd. Ixxv). 

38 All these enumerated ο. c. 379-85. 

39 Jb. 386-8. 

40 Jb. 314-6. 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 19 


The chorus states the whole matter admirably: 


τιμῶν τε Βρόμιον σωφρονεῖς. 
“Give Dionysos his due, and you will be σώφρων. 4! 


Sophrosyne is not abstinence, but proper acquiescence in Nature’s 
ways. The Hippolytos takes pains to illustrate the true meaning of 
the word. Hippolytos is fond of calling himself σώφρων ” and Artemis 
agrees with his definition.** But Phaidra has a different conception of 
sophrosyne: 

ἀτὰρ κακόν YE χἁτέρῳ γενήσομαι 

θανοῦσ᾽, tv’ εἰδῇ μὴ ᾿πὶ τοῖς ἐμοῖς κακοῖς 

ὑψηλὸς εἶναι. τῆς νόσου δὲ τῆσδέ μοι 

κοινῇ μετασχὼν σωφρονεῖν μαθήσεται. 

(Hipp. 728-31) 


Which definition of sophrosyne has the poet’s own approval, we may 
read writ large through all the play. 

We should remember that because the Greeks, like most southern 
races, were inclined to excess, restraint was to them an inherent part 
of conduct. Where northern peoples are apt to phrase the ethical 
alternative as “ to do or not to do,’”’ and make a sheer choice between 
extreme poles, the southern shift the problem to the intermediary zones 
and make the choice one of degree. The Coreyra massacres in Thu- 
cydides are an instance of the excess into which the Greek was not 
infrequently betrayed. Alexandrianism and Byzantinism show the 
ultimate assertion of these fervid tendencies which, in the preceding 
classical age, were controlled only by the most constant application. 
Indeed, one may suspect that Greek art and literatute show essentially 
the curbs and checks of a conscious formalism trying to hold in restraint 
the dithyrambic excess of the national temperament. By having, in 
general, only the formal product preserved to us, we miss the ever- 
present contrast with the unrestrained world with which they strug- 
gled.44 Only on such a supposition can we understand why the 
doctrine of the Mean forms such an apparently disproportionate 
part of Aristotle’s Ethics and why Euripides could write whole plays 


AY Tb 5 θὲ 42 H.g. 80, 1365. 65 70: ΠΟ 

“ The terra cotta figurines often echo the popular temperament unrestrained by 
artistic formalisation. Cf. the well-known caricatures mostly found in Asia Minor, 
and monstrosities such as were discovered in the Demeter sanctuary at Priene, illus- 
trated in Wiegand-Schrader’s Priene. 


20 THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


primarily to exemplify the value and necessity of harmonious and 
balanced conduct. 

The references have emphasized that in love, even more than else- 
where, the need of moderation obtains. The following passages are 
equally illustrative of this teaching: * 


" 4 \ 4 "» 
ἔρωτες ὑπὲρ μὲν ἄγαν 
ἐλθόντες οὐκ εὐδοξίαν 

99) ᾽ \ , 

οὐδ᾽ ἀρετὰν παρέδωκαν 

ἀνδράσιν" εἰ δ᾽ ἅλις ἔλθοι 
Κύπρις, οὐκ ἄλλα θεὸς εὔχαρις οὕτως. 

(Chorus, Med. 627-31) 


μάκαρες οἱ μετρίας θεοῦ 
μετά τε σωφροσύνας μετέ- 
σχον λέκτρων ᾿Αφροδίτας, 
γαλανείᾳ χρησάμενοι 
μανιάδων οἴστρων, ὅθι δὴ 
δίδυμ᾽ "Ἔρως ὁ χρυσοκόμας 
Toe’ ἐντείνεται χαρίτων, 
τὸ μὲν ἐπ᾽ εὐαίωνι πότμῳ, 


τὸ δ᾽ ἐπὶ συγχύσει βιοτᾶς. 


εἴη δὲ μοι μετρία μὲν 
, , >. eed. 
χάρις, πόθοι δ᾽ ὅσιοι, 
καὶ μετέχοιμι Tas ’Adpodi- 


τας, πολλὰν δ᾽ ἀποθείμαν. 
(Chorus, I. A. 543-51; 554-7) 


μετρίων λέκτρων, μετρίων δὲ γάμων 
μετὰ σωφροσύνης 


κῦρσαι θνητοῖσιν ἄριστον. 
(Fragment 505) 


Finally there is the praise of love in a fragment of eleven lines ascribed 
to Euripides: 

παίδευμα δ᾽ "Ἔρως σοφίας ἀρετῆς 

πλεῖστον ὑπάρχει, 

καὶ προσομιλεῖν οὗτος ὁ δαίμων 


πάντων ἥδιστος ἔφυ θνητοῖς. 


4. Cf. similarly, Hipp. 358; 431-2; also Fragment 449 from the earlier Hippol- 
ytos; Fr. 507; 951; Med. 635-6. 


i ae 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 21 


καὶ yap ἄλυπον τέρψιν tw’ ἔχων 
εἰς ἐλπίδ᾽ ἄγει. τοῖς δ᾽ ἀτελέστοις 
τῶν τοῦδε πόνων μήτε συνείην 
χωρίς τ᾽ ἀγρίων ναίοιμι τρόπων. 
τὸ δ᾽ ἐρᾶν προλέγω τοῖσι νέοισιν 
μήποτε φεύγειν, 
χρῆσθαι δ᾽ ὀρθῶς, ὅταν ἔλθῃ. 
(Fragment 889) 


5. Similarly, the rest of man’s emotions are not to be frowned upon 
nor treated with the unrecognising stare of a merciless self-suppression. 
The emotions are natural products. To deny them their due place in 
man’s life is to attain, not a higher ethical plane, but an unhuman one. 
The problem of the individual is not to avoid emotion, but to avoid, 
now excessive emotionality, now emotional insensibility. For example, 
although indulgence in anger is generally injurious to men, there are’ 
instances where a lack of resentment proclaims a spiritless creature, 
a thing somewhat less than a man, like that Phrygian slave in the latter 
part of the Orestes (Il. 1369 ff.) whose barbaric panic and cringing sub- 
mission fill us with contempt. Not to harbour just anger and desire 
for revenge is, in fact, characteristic of the serf; and, in Greek thought, 
the barbarian slave who behaves as a slave, is of a lower and different 
order than real man.** The free-born Greek had a duty toward his own 
self-respect. ᾿Ελευθερότης, the conduct of individual independence, was 
part of his φύσις. Not to maintain it was παρὰ φύσιν and ethically 
wrong. With just this plea Orestes announces his vengeance against 
Menelaos: 

δράσας τι χρήζω τοὺς ἐμοὺς ἐχθροὺς θανεῖν, 
ἵν’ ἀνταναλώσω μὲν οἵ με προύδοσαν, 
στένωσι δ᾽ οἵπερ κἄμ᾽ ἔθηκαν ἄθλιον. 
᾿Αγαμέμνονός τοι παῖς πέφυχ᾽ . .. 

Age ΟΣ ΤΣ aa ὃν οὐ καταισχυνῶ 
δοῦλον παρασχὼν θάνατον, ἀλλ᾽ ἐλευθέρως 
ψυχὴν ἀφήσω, Μενέλεων δὲ τείσομαι. 

(Or. 1164-7; 1169-71) 


Though the evil of excessive anger is often emphasised in Euripides, — 
as for example in the following, 


πολλοὺς δ᾽ ὁ θυμὸς ὁ μέγας ὥλεσεν βροτῶν 
(Fragment 259) 
46 Cf. Fr. 215. 


bo 
bo 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


ὀργῇ yap ὅστις εὐθέως χαρίζεται 


κακῶς τελευτᾷ... .“ 
(Fragment 31) 


none the less, there is such a thing as justifiable anger, — 


γέροντες, αἰνῶ τῶν φίλων yap οὕνεκα 


ὀργὰς δικαίας τοὺς φίλους ἔχειν χρεών, 
(H. Μ. 275-6) 


and in the Herakleidai, when Alkmene at last holds her implacable enemy 
Eurystheus in her power and claims that her right of vengeance is greater 
than the laws of Marathon, the chorus calls her rage συγγνωστόν, “‘ com- 
prehensible,”’ and so “pardonable.’’48 In another play, where Hekabe 
takes a hideous revenge on Polymestor for the violation of the sanctity 
of hospitality and the murder of her son, Agamemnon, in true Eurip- 
_idean fashion, holds an ethical inquest and justifies Hekabe for blind- 
ing Polymestor. The decision gains weight, because awarded by a 
Greek against an ally and in favour of a hereditary foe.* 

In fact, where resentment is justified, it is mere weakness to indulge 
the opposite emotional extreme. Forgiveness and compassion may be 
as wrong and disastrous as wrathful implacability. Though a Frag- 
ment bids: 

. μὴ σκυθρωπὸς ἴσθ᾽ ἄγαν 
πρὸς τοὺς κακῶς πράσσοντας, ἄνθρωπος γεγώς, 
(Fragment 410) 


yet, in the Medeia, Kreon by yielding to his pity for the woman whose 
viperous hate and cunning he secretly dreads and understands, exposes 
himself to vengeance at her hands. He acknowledges his error even 
while he commits it: 


αἰδούμενος δὲ πολλὰ δὴ διέφθορα" 
καὶ νῦν ὁρῶ μὲν ἐξαμαρτάνων, γύναι, 
ὅμως δὲ τεύξῃ τοῦδε" 
(Med. 349-51) 


Searcely has Kreon left the stage when Medeia speaks contemptuously 
of his unwise generosity toward her as “‘senseless folly.” It is true 
Greek ethic (and good logic) to despise in a foe the weakness by which 
one profits. 

Right conduct, here as elsewhere, lies between the two extremes. 


47 Cf. also Fr. 760 and 796. 49 Hek. 1129-1251. 
48 Herakl. 981. 50 Med. 371 ff. 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 23 


Anger must be justified by reason, for reason alone can divine the proper 
norm. Medeia, in yielding wholly to her passion and rage, realises that 
anger in her has exceeded its proper function and that she is morally 
at fault: 

kal μανθάνω μὲν οἷα δρᾶν μέλλω κακά, 

θυμὸς δὲ κρείσσων τῶν ἐμῶν βουλευμάτων, 

ὅσπερ μεγίστων αἴτιος κακῶν βροτοῖς. 

(Med. 1078-80) 

Two fragments present the same doctrine: 


wpa σε θυμοῦ κρείσσονα γνώμην "ἔχειν. 
(Fragment 715) 
πόλλ᾽ ἐστὶν ὀργῆς ἐξ ἀπαιδεύτου κακά. 


(Stob. Flor. 20, 12. Presumably from Euripides) 


“Not too much, yet not too little.” It is this that makes right con- 
duct so rare and so difficult. For the doctrine of the mean applies to 
all conduct, and it is our moral duty to observe the limits between 
excess and defect in all that we do. 

6. Even love of life, it would seem, can be carried to excess. As in 
all other phases of human conduct, there is a mean which alone is the 
right and adequate action. The defect is a form of cowardice. Herakles, 
when about to commit suicide from despair, checks himself with the 
reflection that the coward thinks death easier than misfortune: the 
brave man holds more fast to life.*! Yet the other extreme is no less 
cowardly. Iphigeneia, before she makes her resolve to die for Greece, 
has gone to such excess. It is possible λίαν φιλοψυχεῖν, to love one’s own 
life overmuch, as she herself realises.*2 Old men, says Iphis in the 
Hiketides,** cling to their useless shred of life beyond its worth. And 
Pheres in the Alkestis is taunted by his own son for hoarding with 
selfish greed the few years that yet remain before death.*! 

It is a Greek tenet that death is better than disgrace: 


see ἡ γὰρ αἰσχύνη πάρος 
τοῦ ζῆν παρ᾽ ἐσθλοῖς ἀνδράσιν νομίζεται. 
(Herakl. 200-1) 


Brave men reckon honour before life; in the choice of evils between 
disgrace and death it is preferable to die.*° 


δι H. M. 1347 ff. 53 Hik. 1108-13. 
ΕΣ 1. Α. 1385. 54 Alk. 642-50 et αἱ. 
% Cf. H. M. 284-92; Hipp. 400-2; 426-7; Fr. 599. 


24 THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


7. In pleasure and pain,® then, in joy and grief,®” in praise and 
envy,°’ in courage and fear, in anger and humility, in pity and com- 
passion, in friendship, — in short, in all our emotional relations, 
Euripides exhibits to us how excess will do harm and lead man astray, 
while deficient sentiment will leave him too colourless and inactive, a 
creature below the level of that true moral agent which it is man’s proper 
function to be. 

8. But there is a large class of material and spiritual possessions, 
which mankind calls “the good things of this earth,” against which 
the Few have ever preached without ever signally persuading the Many. 
Wealth and honour and power are good to have; and, thinks the world, 
the more of them one has, the better. It has always been difficult to 
expose the fallacy in this seemingly self-evident equation and to show 
that More Good does not necessarily spell Better. Greed of wealth and 
greed of power have been combated in many ways, — though for only 
one reason: because they threaten the moral equipoise of society. 
Moralists have cudgelled their brains to discover plausible arguments 
against them; obviously, as they are not at all good for others, the indi- 
vidual must be convinced that they are really not good for him. To 
produce this conviction is the aim of Plato’s Republic. Of the host of 
other attempts, utilitarianism is perhaps the most hypocritical, as Chris- 
tianity is the most sincere. What attempt at proof is there in Euripides ? 

Several passages praise wealth without reserve.®* As they are all frag- 
ments and tell us neither character nor context, they are not evidence 
with direct bearing.** Had the following verses, for example, survived 
to us without further information than that they were from Euripides: 


ὁ πλοῦτος, ἀνθρωπίσκε, τοῖς σοφοῖς θεός, 
τὰ δ᾽ ἄλλα κόμποι καὶ λόγων εὐμορφίαι, 


Mannikin! wealth the wise man’s god is, 
Everything else a wordy fraud is! © 


56 Above, pp. 14-19. 

57 Fr. 364, ll. 32-34; Herakl. 619-20; Fr. 422. 

8. Or. 1161; Fr. 297. 89 Above, pp. 12-13. 0 Jb:,spp: 21-3... Tbs poe: 

8 Hipp. 253-60. 6 Fr. 96; 143; 326; 327; 328; 379; 584. 

6 And here I take the opportunity to acknowledge freely the fallacy of taking 
every stray word as a reflection of Euripides’ own convictions. There is a very real 
difficulty in distinguishing, in the work of a dramatic poet, what is said out of dra- 
matic fitness from what is meant as the poet’s own opinion; but in every case I have 
tried to base important steps in my argument on only such statements as seem to 
reflect Euripides in propria persona. Cf. the remarks of Decharme, Euripide et 
lV’ Esprit de son Theatre, pp. 27-8; and also supra, pp. 3-4.. 66 Kykl. 316-17. 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 25 


we might be puzzled what conclusions to draw. How differently we 
treat the passage when we learn that it is an utterance of that mighty 
hedonist, the Kyklops, whose high god is his belly,®* and for whom food 
and warmth and sleep and animal-like irresponsibility complete the 
pantheon! * 

Of the fragments which praise wealth, three of the most laudatory 
appear to come from the lost play, Danae. A story, told by Seneca in 
reference to one of these three, warns us how we ought to interpret 
other fragments inconsonant with the attitude of Euripides in his 
preserved plays. In Epist. 115, Seneca gives a Latin version of Frag- 
ment 326 with its exorbitant praise of gold: 


ὦ χρυσέ, de~iwua κάλλισπον βροτοῖς, 

ὡς οὔτε μήτηρ ἡδονὰς τοιάσδ᾽ ἔχει, 

οὐ παῖδες ἀνθρώποισιν, οὐ φίλος πατήρ. .. 
εἰ δ᾽ ἡ Κύπρις τοιοῦτον ὀφθαλμοῖς ὁρᾶ(ν) 55 


ov θαῦμ᾽ ἔρωτας μυρίους αὐτὴν ἔχειν, 
(Fragment 326) 


and continues, ‘“ When these verses were spoken for the first time in 
Kuripides’ tragedy, the entire audience sprang up as by a single im- 
pulse to eject both actor and play, until Euripides himself stood up in 
their midst and begged them to wait and see what happened to this 
person who thought so much of gold.”’ We may believe the anecdote ἡ 
or not. Yet, with more of the context preserved, we well might see 
a similar fate overtake the characters in the five other fragments which 
praise the power and glory of wealth. At any rate, it is fairly obvious 
what Euripides thought on the subject. A fragment from the Alex- 
andros® sounds like a taunt against Paris himself: ‘Wealth and lux- 
ury are an unmanly training. Poverty, though a harsh teacher, is a 
good one.” In other Fragments, we hear that wealth dulls the sensibili- 
ties,” that the rich are dull in body and in mind,” and that wealth with- 
out intelligence is useless.72 Riches wrongly acquired are even worse 
than useless,” for the prosperity which they bring is transient.’ Worst 
of all, wealth breeds a certain ips,” and therein lurks the beginning 


of ruin.7® 


6 Kykl. 335. 8” Jb. 323-41. 

6 Conjecturing ὁρᾶν to be Seneca’s reading. 

69 Fr, 55. 7 10. 163; 237; 1054. 7% 70. 441. 
7 Ib. 773. 185. Tb. 822. 7% 10. 1027. 


1 10. 773; 642. 4 Ib. 364, ll. 11-13; 421. 


20 THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


The preserved plays are better evidence for Euripides’ own feeling. 
The Hekabe is devoted to the punishment of avarice. Vengeance comes 
at the hands of the helpless woman who has most been wronged. We 
call such a dénouement “poetic” justice, implying that it scarcely 
could occur in the real world of prose. Euripides, I hope to show, felt 
otherwise about the matter. Again, in the play of the Supphant Women, 
Theseus characterises the march of the seven warriors against Thebes 
as an example of ruin brought on by greed of honour, of power, and of 
gain.” Later in the play, Adrastos delivers a long eulogy on the slain 
seven. Concerning Tydeus he says: 


φιλότιμον ἦθος πλούσιον, φρόνημα δὲ 
ἐν τοῖσιν ἔργοις, οὐχὶ τοῖς λόγοις, ἴσον. 
(Hik. 907-8) 
His praise of Kapaneus is still more significant: 


Καπανεὺς ὅδ᾽ ἐστίν" @ Bios μὲν ἦν πολύς, 
ἥκιστα δ᾽ ὄλβῳ γαῦρος ἦν. φρόνημα δὲ 


οὐδέν τι μεῖζον εἶχεν ἢ πένης ἀνήρ. 
(Hik. 861-3) 


Adrastos and Theseus, then, disagree in their judgment on these men. 
But in one thing they seem to agree thoroughly, and that is in their 
belief that too much wealth or honour bring disaster, and that only 
by humility, by acting as if one had neither honours nor wealth, is it 
possible to avoid destruction. The clearest expression of this belief is 
in a Fragment: 

ὅταν δ᾽ ἴδῃς πρὸς ὕψος ἡρμένον τινὰ 

λαμπρῷ τε πλούτῳ καὶ γένει γαυρούμενον 

ὀφρύν τε μείζω τῆς τύχης ἐπηρκότα, 


τούτου ταχεῖαν νέμεσιν εὐθὺς προσδόκα. 
(Fragment 1027). 


These verses sound a key-note of the histories of Herodotus and the 
tetralogies of the Aeschylean drama. Euripides was an innovator: he 
brought tragedy down from its ancient exalted severity, its σεμνότης, 
and filled it with clever wrangle of disputes caught from law-trials and 
the sophists’ corner. But he never tried to rid the Attic stage of its 
faith in that poetic justice which overtakes the rich and the powerful 
when they presume on their high fortune. On the contrary, he keeps 
displaying the power of this invisible requital; for it is a foundation- 


7 Aik. 232-7. 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 27 


‘ 


stone of his ethic. For him it is the one proof that in the “good things 
of this earth,” in gold, in honour, and in power, there is a mean of right 
conduct, and an ever-present possibility of excess. 

In the Herakleidai, Iolaos, an old and feeble man, suddenly displays 
an inexplicable folly by demanding to be armed and led into battle. 
Judging him for what he seems, the audience may admire, but cannot 
commend, his mad ambition. But later we hear, through a messenger, 
of wonderful feats of arms. Iolaos, the decrepit and helpless, regains 
his youth and strength on the field of battle” and takes captive Eurys- 
theus, who, with implacable persecution of Heracles and all his race, has 
so long hounded that hero’s ancient comrade. The play is entirely 
devoted to the fall of presumptuous evil-doing and the ultimate happi- 
ness of the innocent, through the liberation of the Herakleidai from the 
persecution of Eurystheus and their restoration to the kingship which 
is theirs by right. Iolaos is the sudden and miraculous embodiment of 
this divine retribution. As if to emphasise its unearthly origin, it in- 
carnates itself in an outworn warrior who is unable to carry his own 
armour. 

This is perhaps the extreme case of justitia ex machina. In other 
plays it takes a less miraculous course; but everywhere we are made 
to realise that something more than human agency is at work. So, 
in the Hekabe, the gauntlet is thrown down in challenge to heaven. 
Talthybios, the Greek herald, on seeing the former queen of Troy now 
a slave in the Greek camp, overwhelmed with misfortune, prostrate on 
the ground with grief, exclaims over her: 

ὦ Zed, τί λέξω; πότερά σ᾽ ἀνθρώπους ὁρᾶν; 
ἢ δόξαν ἄλλως τήνδε κεκτῆσθαι μάτην, 
τύχην δὲ πάντα τἀν βροτοῖς ἐπισκοπεῖν; 
(Hek. 488-91) 
Still more explicitly, Hekabe herself states the challenge: 


e “ A > an , > ao ” e 
ἡμεῖς μὲν οὖν δοῦλοί TE κἀσθενεῖς ἴσως 
ἀλλ᾽ οἱ θεοὶ σθένουσι XW κείνων κρατῶν 
Νόμος" νόμῳ γὰρ τοὺς θεοὺς ἡγούμεθα 

\ a ” \ , 3 t L Ρ 
καὶ ζῶμεν ἄδικα καὶ δίκαι᾽ ὡρισμένοι 
ὃς ἐς σ᾽ ἀνελθὼν εἰ διαφθαρήσεται, 

A t ’ , eo , 
καὶ μὴ δίκην δώσουσιν οἵτινες ξένους 

, BI - ε \ A , 
κτείνουσιν ἢ θεῶν ἱερὰ τολμῶσιν φέρειν, 


οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδὲν τῶν ἐν ἀνθρώποις ἴσον. 
(Hek. 798-805) 
78 Herakl. 843-63. 


28 THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


In the end, divine justice fulfils itself. The fatal avarice of Polymestor 
leads him into Hekabe’s power. She herself accomplishes her revenge. 

In the Suppliants, Theseus punishes Thebes for insolently refusing 
to allow burial to the slain Argive Seven. The chorus considers this 
intimation of justice to be a proof of the existence of a divine ordinance 
in the world.” 

The plays of the Euripidean “Oresteia” are the best example of 
this faith in the certainty of ultimate justice. In the Aulic Iphigeneia, 
Agamemnon through cowardice agrees to sacrifice his daughter. Ten 
years later, on his return from Troy, he pays the penalty at the hands 
of his wife Klytaimestra. She however acted, not so much to avenge 
her daughter, as to cover her adultery. She has done evil, therefore, 
and must pay the penalty at the hands of Orestes.*° Aigisthos, too, 
must suffer for his adultery and his participation in Agamemnon’s 
death. Over his dead body, Elektra speaks the splendid lines which 
are a summary of all that Euripides is trying to establish: 


μή μοι TO πρῶτον βῆμ᾽ ἐὰν δράμῃ καλῶς, 
νικᾶν δοκείτω τὴν Δίκην, πρὶν ἂν πέλας 


γραμμῆς ἵκηται καὶ τέλος κάμψῃ βίου. 
(ΕἸ. 954-6) 


In no instance can wickedness go for ever unpunished.*!_ Appearances 
often point another way; but, in the end, justice through unknown 
ways fulfils herself on man. Euripides is never tired of emphasising 
this essential part of his faith. Thus we read that no unjust man ever 
prospered *? and that in vain the wicked hope to escape.** The last 
lines of the Ion are the seal of his doctrine: *4 


és τέλος yap of μὲν ἐσθλοὶ τυγχάνουσιν ἀξίων, 
Η \ ) vw. , ? ” ? = , " 
οἱ κακοὶ δ᾽, ὥσπερ πεφύκασ᾽, οὔποτ᾽ εὖ πράξειαν ἄν. 
(Ion 1621-2) 


7” Hik. 731-3. 

8 Orestes, acting purely through vengeance, seeks to fulfil justice. The death 
of Klytaimestra is just, but agent and means are wrong (cf. Or. 492-506). Hence 
Orestes too must suffer; but, because he has intended justice, he will find ultimate 
acquittal. 

8! In the Andromache, Menelaos ruthlessly breaks his faith, and the helpless 
Andromache has no weapon save her belief that the gods punish evil and maintain 
justice. Curiously enough, the efficacy of divine justice is never put to the test, since 
Peleus intervenes. This play, however, seems to be largely a loose series of events 
calculated to discredit Spartan character to the Athenian audience. 

8 Hel. 1030-1; cf. Fr. 646. 8 Similarly, Fr. 224 and 559. 

8 Fr. 257; 832; cf. Hek. 1192-4. 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 29 


Time will tell; * for it holds up a mirror to mankind, as to a 
young maiden’s beauty,*® and men’s characters stand revealed. Time 
measures with a just rule,” and by it we know the good man from the 
wicked.*8 

Toward the close of the Ion, Athena says: 


ἀεὶ γὰρ οὖν 
χρόνια μὲν τὰ τῶν θεῶν πως, ἐς τέλος δ᾽ οὐκ ἀσθενῆ. 
(Ion 1614-5) 


And this we might almost translate with the truly Greek lines: 


“Though the mills of the gods grind slowly, 
Yet they grind exceeding small.”’ 


With this belief that there is an unseen divine vengeance on all evil- 
doing, the last doubt vanishes and we understand how it is that, even 
when excess seems profitable to the individual, it cannot prove to be 
so for very long. The norm of human living is a demand of φύσις, of uni- 
versal nature. If φύσις does not immediately and openly punish its 
violation, then slowly and invisibly she prepares the downfall of the 
offending individual. 

Thus, Nemesis completes the proof of the doctrine of the Mean. 
The unseen ordinance of the world is such that it will not tolerate excess 
in any form. For, all excess is synonymous with a violation of φύσις; 
and φύσις, in one form or another, punishes τὰ παρὰ φύσιν. 

The evidence which has been given is now sufficiently complete for 
the construction of a logical outline which will be at once a summary 
of the previous pages and a conclusion drawn from them. Since it is 
intended as a condensed exposition of the metaphysical basis of Eurip- 
idean ethics, I give it, for the sake of clarity, in schematic form: 


Tuesis. Right action is κατὰ φύσιν. Every action rapa φύσιν is 
detrimental to the agent, and therefore wrong. 


DEFINITION. φύσις, or the order of nature, includes: 
(a) The material and physical laws of the universe. 
(b) The material growth, maintenance, and decay of organisms, i.e., 
life in all its forms. 
(c) The cause of those sudden unintelligible (because unprognos- 
ticable) events which the ordinary man calls chance or fate. 


85 Fr, 444; 509. 87 Fr, 305. 
86 Hipp. 428-30. 88. Fr, 61, 


90 THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


Evipencr. Under each of these three aspects of φύσις, our thesis must 
be shown to be true and operative: 

(a) Experience amply shows that man must conform himself to 
the universal material laws and not seek to divert them from 
their normal function. 

(b) The thesis is manifestly valid for plants and for animals. In - 
the case of man, however, it needs proof: 

Every violation of a norm can be measured quantitatively, 
ie., it is due either to excess or to deficiency. The norm 
itself (which our thesis identifies with right conduct) is there- 
fore a mean between two extremes. 


We must show that: 
(1) Observance of the mean is good for the agent. 

The proof is derived from the evident formal and material 
superiority of all organisms under their complete natural 
conditions. 

(2) Violation of the mean is bad for the agent. 

For it throws the organism into an abnormal state in 
which it is less fitted to perform its function. In man, 
this is obviously true for his more violent emotional states. 
There are, however, cases where excess seems to benefit 
the individual at the expense of his surroundings, particu- 
larly at the expense of his fellow-men. Such conduct is 
manifestly harmful to the latter; but it must be shown to 
be ultimately harmful to the agent also. No evidence of 
this is immediately forthcoming, and the proof must be 
postponed for the moment. - 

(c) Empirical observation of the unprognosticable events of “ chance” 
and “fate’’ reveals certain clearly regulated tendencies and 
proves these very events to be a great and invisible legislation 
for maintaining the validity of our thesis, and furnishes the 
proof which we were unable to give at the end of the previous 
section. We call these events the working of divine justice: 
the force behind them we identify with the gods. 


Thus, our thesis has been shown valid in each of the three aspects of 
φύσις, and may fairly be considered established. 


CHAPTER III 


THE connection between ethics and theology was not as manifest 
in Greek as it is in Christian ethics; yet to thinking minds the moral 
and the religious could not long remain unrelated. Socratic teaching 
put moral life into Ionian materialistic speculation. The “atheist” 
helped to rehabilitate the gods. For Euripides the gods are the unseen 
legislators of the world, who so order the apparent caprices of events 
that they form a moral system of punishment and reward. Yet Euripides 
apparently casts discredit on the Olympians. Thus, the Ion shows 
Apollo taking precariously elaborate measures in order to emerge with 
even superficial credit from a rather disgraceful scrape. In another 
play, Herakles complains bitterly against Hera’s persecution: Zeus 
was unfaithful, Hera was jealous, and unoffending Herakles must 
suffer. “Who would pray to such a goddess?” he exclaims.! In the 
Bacchae, Dionysos takes a hideous revenge, such as mortals scarce 
approve.” 

Of all the gods, Apollo suffers most from Euripides. He is vindic- 
tive and unforgiving in the Andromache,’? immoral and underhanded 
in the Ion,* an instigator of mischief in the Suppliants.° It may be 
that there was an Athenian quarrel against the Delphic oracle. It may 
be that Euripides disbelieved in oracles and divination. His charac- 
ters exclaim not infrequently against such practices.’ In the Elektra 
and the Orestes, the Delphic oracle prompted the murder of Klytai- 
mestra, and Orestes blames all his consequent misfortunes on the god,’ 
and Elektra joins in his censure. But here in the end Apollo proves 
himself just, as Orestes gladly acknowledges.? The divine will was 
slow in accomplishment, — a signal characteristic, as Orestes himself 
declared.’© In fact, it is τοιοῦτον φύσει. 

I cannot enter in detail into the question of Euripides’ religion; 

1H. M. 1307-10; ef. 1316-20 and 339-47. 

2 Bacch. 1348. 3 Andr. 1161-5. 

4 Ton, passim; οἷ. esp. Ion’s own criticisms of Apollo in 436-51; 355; 367. 

5 Hik. 188 and 219-22. 

6 H.g. Hel. 744-8; 756-60. But οἵ. Hipp. 1320-4. 

7 Or. 285-7; 414-20; 591-9; El. 971-3; 981; ef. 1245-6. 


8 Or. 162-4. 8. Or: 1666-7. 10 Or. 420. 
91 


" eee eee 


92 THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


but must be content with the assertion that all the evidence seems to 
me to indicate quite clearly that Euripides is so severe with the gods 
because he believes in them so thoroughly. From the often quoted 
fragment: 
εἰ Θεοί τι δρῶσιν αἰσχρόν, οὐκ εἰσὶν Θεοί, 
“Tf the gods do evil, then they are not gods,” 
(From Fragment 294) 


we must not conclude that there are no gods, but that the gods do no 
evil. The quarrel with Apollo is the only serious instance to the con- 
trary, and this seems to be directed against the Delphic oracle for other 
than ethical reasons. 

For, if there is to be any higher ethical sanction for mankind, the 
forces of the universal ordinance cannot be evil or do evil. For this 
reason, the gods must be purged of all their traditional immoralities. 
The gods can do no evil, and therefore Euripides is merciless with them. 
But he fights for them not against them: 


οὐδένα yap οἶμαι δαιμόνων εἶναι κακόν. 
(1... 991) 


Euripides openly declares that the gods must be purged of their 
evil reputations and established as that higher justice from which 
human morality derives its sanction. Therefore, the gods should be 
above revenge! and more wisely forgiving than mankind.” In a word, 
they can do no evil;" for otherwise we, who imitate them, would not 
be to blame for the evil which we perform," since our actions take their 
sanction from the gods.” Thus the gods must be moral and just, for 
otherwise where should we turn for justice? 1 If there are gods at all, 
the just man will gain a good reward” and the wicked be destroyed,” 
but if there are no gods, all justice vanishes, and why should we strive 
to be moral?!® Or, reversing the argument, if injustice prevails on 
earth, we cannot believe in the gods; but “when I see the wicked 
fallen, I say, The race of gods exists!” (Fr. 581). In one form or 
another, so say most of the heroes and heroines of Euripides’ plays; 
and, presumably, so said also the Athenian audience which beheld the 


11 Bacch. 1348. 12 Hipp. 120. 

13 Fr. 294 quoted above. Yet Aphrodite often works evil; hence she is not a 
god, but something else, something more powerful (Hipp. 358-61), who overcomes 
even the gods (Fr. 484). See below p. 41. 14 Ton 449-51. 

18 Hipp. 98. 171, A. 1034-5. 19 T. A. 1035. 

16 Jon 253. 18 Hik. 505. 20 El. 583. 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 99 


ultimate triumph of the good and punishment of the overbearing, of 
the wicked who exceeded the due measure of the norm of life. 

In conclusion, I give the important passage from the Troiades, which 
openly points a finger to the place of the gods in Euripides’ ethical 
system: 7! 

ὅστις ποτ᾽ εἶ ot, δυστόπαστος εἰδέναι, 
Ζεύς, εἴτ᾽ ἀνάγκη φύσεος εἴτε νοῦς βροτῶν, 
προσηυξάμην oe’ πάντα γὰρ δι᾽ ἀψόφου 
βαίνων κελεύθου κατὰ δίκην τὰ θνήτ᾽ ἄγεις. 
(Tro. 885-8) 


For Euripides the gods are ceasing to be persons. They are becoming 
the more or less abstract forces in Nature which work for universal 
justice. 


Of human justice I can find in Euripides no clear account. He fre- 
quently gives it a partial definition. It involves religious observance 
and veneration; *’ it is punctiliousness (ἀτρέκεια) ; * it is respect for prop- 
erty;™ it is altruistic, since it is directed toward the good of fellow- 
men.” But though naturally we find no analysis and systematic 
treatment such as Aristotle gives in the fifth book of the Nico- 
machean Ethics, there are a couple of passages in Euripides which are 
definite. 

The first is Iokaste’s speech to her two warring sons in the Phoinis- 
sai.”° She is pleading for a divided kingship in Thebes; but appeals 
to more general principles: “The tyrant’s rule is merely successful 
injustice and doomed to anxiety and misfortune. Be not over-ambi- 
tious; but rather, be just, and grant everyone his share. Justice is 
equality.” 

The second passage’ is in similar vein. Theseus is disputing 
political theory with the Theban herald for the glorification of Athens 


ΠΑ convenient indication of the philosophic echoes in this passage may be found 
in J. Adam’s Religious Teachers of Greece, p. 299 ff., where it may be of interest to 
note that the important phrase ἀνάγκη diceos draws a blank, so to speak: — “ It is 
not so clear that Euripides had any definite philosophic theory in view when he sug- 
gested that this Zeus or Aether is perhaps to be regarded as ἀνάγκη φύσεος --- Nature’s 
Necessity or Law. He may be thinking, perhaps, of the Atomists, ete... .” 
Mr. Adam justly suggests that the εἴτε clauses “are not really intended to exclude 
one another.” 

2 Herakl. 901-3; cf. Fr. 1063. * Herakl. 1-5. 

23 Hr. 92. 26 Phoin. 528-67. . 

22 Hr. 556: 27 Hik. 429-55; v. also Fr. 429. 


94 THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


and the delectation of the audience. He condemns tyranny and com- 
mends written law, whereby rich and poor, and strong and weak, have 
equal hearing and equal redress. Such equality is justice. 

But though there is neither adequate definition nor analytic discus- 
sion of justice in Euripides such as Plato gives in his Republic or Aris- 
totle in the fifth book of the Ethics, indirectly there is evidence of ideals 
as thoughtful and as far-reaching. 

As we have seen, he believes that justice is the gods’ care and obtains 
a deep and universal self-fulfilment. Though occasional characters 
ery out that rapacious and ruthless power is so successful and 
complain: 

πόλεις TE μικρὰς οἶδα τιμώσας θεούς, 
αἱ μειζόνων κλύουσι δυσσεβεστέρων 
λόγχης ἀριθμῷ πλείονος κρατούμεναι, 
_ (From Fragment 288) 
yet the conviction is strong that 


οὐδεὶς στρατεύσας ἄδικα σῶς ἦλθεν πάλιν, 
(Fragment 355) 


and “ foolish are they who gather virtue with the point of the spear; 
if battle is to decide, never will strife depart from cities of mankind.” 
In fact, it is entirely due to evil of man that there is injustice abroad; 
for ‘the gods’ deeds are just, but among wicked men they sicken and 
fall into confusion.” *° 

The hidden world works for justice, for equality among men, and for 
requital of good and evil. Kingship and tyranny must vanish and a 
perfect equality arise among men. With such an ideal, what of women 
and of slaves? 

Euripides had a profound belief in women.*® He did not look on 
them as Plato in the interest of formal theorising once seems to have 
done,*! as men with child-bearing functions, able to do all that men 
could, though hampered by a lack of strength. Euripides looked on 


28 Chorus in Hel. 1151-7. 

29 Fr. 609. The reading is more uncertain than the general trend. 

30 The long speech against women by Hippolytos (615-68) accords with an 
anti-erotic or sexually perverted nature.’ It throws no light on Euripides’ own views. 
Rather, it shows much understanding of a type which has probably always been 
exceptional, but which has always existed. Of the other misogynistic outbursts in 
Euripides, I find five are mere short fragments without a background (Fr. 500; 532; 
805; 1045; 1046). There remains the taunt of Jason in Med. 573-5, which is 
scarcely a rooted conviction of either author or character. For a good survey of the 
material, v. Decharme, ch. IV, § 1. 31 Rep. Book V. 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 35 


women quite frankly as women. He saw many faults in them, that 
they were scheming and unscrupulous,” inordinately jealous,®* defect- 
ive in a sense of honour and fair play,*4 gossiping and meddlesome.* 
Yet he declares a good wife to be the bulwark of a house * and a bless- 
ing to the fortunate man who wedded her.*” But women are not men 
disguised under another sex. Their virtues are womanly, their natural 
functions are essentially domestic.*®> But justice and equality apply as 
much to them as to men. They have been unfairly criticised, good 
women and bad have fallen under a common censure;*’ it is men who 
have talked, while women have had no hearing;* had they but equal 
opportunity, they could recount as many evils about men.*! They 
should have equality of speech, therefore. More than that, divorce 
should be a mutual right *” and unchastity as much an offence in the 
husband as in the wife.” 

It is part, therefore, of Euripides’ belief in that equality which he 
identifies with justice, that women should have equal rights with men, 
provided always that they fulfil their place as women." It is of course 
consonant with this that polygamy, being unequal, is unjust and un- 
natural. In the Andromache, the chorus compares a household with 
two wives to a city with two rulers, a play by two authors, and a ship 
with two pilots.” 

In the case of slaves, Euripides feels none of the injustice of their 
position. It is not that they are morally worthless. Though he some- 
times calls them so,*® more often he shows a great appreciation of their 
self-respect, their honour, and their faithfulness. The old nurses in 
the Medeia and the Hippolytos are among his most human and attract- 

2 Med. 407-9; I. T. 1082; Hik. 294; Andr. 262-8; 380-4; 425-32, where 
Hermione seems to be the instigator; but much of the Andromache must be 
discounted as a ruthless attack on Spartan behaviour. 

33 Andr. 155-80. 85 Phoin. 198-201. 

34 Fr. 673; Andr. 516-22. 36 Fr. 1041. 

37 Fy, 164; 1042; 1043; ef. I. A. 749-50. 

38 Praise of good wives: Fr. 819; 820; Tro. 645-56; and esp. Fr. 901. 

39 Ton 398-400; Hek. 1183-6; Fr. 496; 658; cf. Fr. 497. 

40 Ton 1090-8. 

41 Med. 421-30. Cf. on the unequal and difficult position of men, Medeia’s 
speech in 230-51. 4 Andr. 672-4. 

43 El. 1036-41. Cf. however the opposite attitude of Andromache in the play 
of that name, 215-26. 

44 They should remain indoors, Herakl. 476-7; Fr. 525; and not strive to rule 
in their home, Andr. 213-4; El. 1052-3. 

4 Andr. 464-85. Cf. the equally strong opinion of Hermione in the same play, 


173-80. 
46 Cf. Fr. 49; 50; 215; and the Phrygian in the latter part of the Orestes. 


90 THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


ive characters. In fact, in three instances he declares them at least 
the equals of their masters.*7 Yet he never cries out against the injus- 
tice of their position. I imagine that he, like Aristotle, must have looked 
on slavery as a natural and necessary institution. He never expresses 
the possibility of doing without it. Its evils and injustice never touch 
his logic or brain; but that they could touch his heart, and call forth his 
deepest emotions of pity and sorrow, is patent to any who read even 
casually the great lamentations in the Hekabe and Troiades. 

Slavery is a misfortune, the greatest of all misfortunes, so hopeless 
that death is preferable to it.8 Yet there is nothing to be done. It is 
the order of nature and the will of the unseen ordinance. This seems 
to be Euripides’ position; but under its reasoning we seem to hear 
his soul crying out with the distress of Hekabe, yet comforting itself 
with the thought that under good masters the lot of the slaves was not 
evil, and that in the household of Alkestis they were rather children 
than serfs.** It is rather the horrors of war, such as we see them in the 
Hekabe, that lend their gloomy colours to the spectacle of man become 
the chattel and the property of his fellow-beings. It is a strange posi- 
tion, humanity struggling for expression almost against the dictate 
of reason. 

At the beginning of this thesis I spoke of an ἀρχή, a universal prin- 
ciple, running through Greek ethical thought. This ἀρχή I identified 
with life in the norm of Nature. To Euripides, a careful interrogation 
of Nature supplies the empiric rules of conduct, and so furnishes an 
objective standard, external to the agent. What behaviour is right in 
this or that crisis? what are the gods? what is the proper position of 
women or of slaves? To answer these and other questions of conduct, 
we must in every case turn to Nature. What is the φύσις of women and 
of slaves? we must ask.’ If that can be determined, we shall have 


47 Hel. 728-81; Ion 854-6; Fr. 515. 

48 Hek. 857-78; 211-15. Fr. 247. 49 Alk. 193-5, 769-71. 

°° It will be noticed that this question implies a classification by type, as if woman 
qua woman had a distinctive φύσις. This process of thinking by type or class is 
natural to a people among whom the caste-system prevails. But it is also in general 
a necessary stage in a process of differentiation. One is reminded of the develop- 
ment of artistic types in sculpture, from the undifferentiated nude male to the various 
distinct athletic types (the boxer, the wrestler, the runner, etc.), at which still unin- 
dividualised stage the process seems almost arrested until the fourth century. In 
much the same way, the Greek thinkers differentiated the moral agent into types or 
classes, whose functions and natural capacities (ἔργον and φύσις) they treated as 
limited and distinctive. So the slave, δοῦλος (Soph. O. C. 763-4), the νομεύς (ib. 
1118; cf. Od. 17, 322). 


tt τα 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 97 


discovered their proper position and conduct. The appeal to φύσις 
is the great source of moral sanction. Whatever is κατὰ φύσιν is morally 
right; whatever is παρὰ φύσιν is morally wrong. 

To the Greek mind, therefore, morality is not a matter of subjective 
impulse or conscience or self-interrogation. Man identifies himself in 
the world by a realization that he is an ordered part of it with a deter- 
mined place and function. It is his duty to fulfil that function, to play 
his part as Nature intended. 

This is the ἀνυπόθετος ἀρχή of which I spoke. It has proved itself 
under all of Euripides’ ethical feeling as the forma informans which alone 
explains and unifies his teaching. His religion, his morality, the mean- 
ing of his plays, all become clearer in the light of this single and simple 
principle. Thus understood, the Greek tragedian is as logical and as 
consistent as his fellow Greeks in philosophy and art. 

The thesis is therefore concluded, — or rather, it would be, were it 
not that there is another and counter principle in Euripides which 
conflicts with this one and in certain cases supersedes it. To this other 
principle the remainder of the thesis must be devoted. 


CHAPTER IV 


UNDER a system of ethics such as we have sketched, the individual 
is self-centred. His actions are not for others, but for himself. In 
identifying his own complete and harmonious development with his 
highest good, he excludes that long range of so-called Christian virtues 
which stretches from self-denial to self-obliteration. For how can it 
help the individual, if he die to save another than himself ? 

Yet human instincts and human nature have always been much the 
same, and the Greek could die for his city or lay down his life for a 
friend, whether or not strict logic of his ethical theories justified his 
behaviour. Nor could he withhold his admiration and applause if he 
beheld another man perform similar unselfish acts. 

In the Nicomachean Ethics we read nothing about self-sacrifice. 
For such an unwearied student as Aristotle, devoted to increasing his 
knowledge and extending his logic till it should cover every phase of 
human thought and action, what possible attraction or what possible 
meaning could there be in a creed of self-abnegation whose commands 
must run counter to his whole life’s activity ? With the instincts of the 
scholar, however, Aristotle combined those of a teacher, and here he 
experienced the desire of labouring for another’s benefit. There creeps 
into the Aristotelian ethics, therefore, the famous chapter on friend- 
ship, with its characteristic analysis of friends into three kinds, friends 
for delectation, friends for utility, and friends for love of the good which 
isin them. The last class contains the only true friends. This meant, 
in the fourth century before Christ, to Aristotle, tutor of Alexander 
and sage of the Lyceum, three kinds of associates, — men to dine with 
and to jest with; influential men with power in their hands; and, last, 
the true intimates, pupils and followers, who could discuss philosophy. 
Now, philosophy among the Greeks was not a lone man’s plaything, a 
solitary invention of secluded minds. Truth rose only out of discus- 
sion; like a child, it needed two parents. The outcome of the Nicoma- 
chean Ethics is a glorification of the life of philosophic speculation and 
an admission of the need of like-minded friends for successful pursuit 
of this philosophic ideal. To the last, therefore, Aristotle clung to the 


self-centred creed of the scholar, admitting friends not for friends’ 
38 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 39 


sake, but because they were indispensable to that highest scholarly and 
philosophical self-development which was for him the consummate 
human type on earth, the realization of all the latent possibilities of the 
thinking animal, man.’ 

It is interesting to see how every distinction in Aristotle’s discussion 
of friendship can be found already made in Euripides. Thus, there are 
the same classes of false friends, those for advantage,” and those through 
pleasure (j50v9,° πρὸς xdpw*), and such friendships may exist among 
evil men through the attraction of like for like,’ while true friendship 
occurs only between the good, for it is a “love for a just and restrained 
and virtuous soul’? (ἔρως ψυχῆς δικαίας σὠφρονός τε κἀγαθῆς). Misfor- 
tune is the great test of friendship, for it reveals the motive, and only 
that friendship which is based, not on advantage or an idle interest, but 
on a deep-rooted affection will endure amid adversity.’ Such friends 
are a gift beyond all value. Though they are admittedly rare,’ there 
are eloquent and unforgettable examples in the pages of Euripides. 
Such is the friendship of Theseus and Herakles in the Herakles Mai- 
nomenos. Insanity and murder with all its pollution do not shake the 
loyalty of Theseus, who proclaims for friendship a higher sanctity: 


οὐδεὶς ἀλάστωρ τοῖς φίλοις Ex τῶν φίλων. 
(ΕἸΣ ΝΗ 1254}. 


The last lines of the play ὁ mark still more the sanctity and solemnity 
of this high friendship which no crime can shatter or alter. More fa- 
mous, though not more touching, is the indissoluble comradeship of 
Orestes and Pylades throughout the Tauric Iphigeneia, the Elektra, 
and the Orestes. Of such a friendship must have been written the Frag- 
ment from which a line has already been quoted. Though it is not 


1 The ἕτερος αὐτός is a logical quibble to keep the ethical centre within the indi- 
vidual. An unselfish act for a friend now ceases to be unselfish, for the action is 
performed to benefit that more comprehensive Self (I plus friend, or Self plus Second 
Self). The strict logic of individualistic ethics is preserved, but the barriers are really 
already down. Why limit the extension of self to a friend or two? But if the exten- 
sion is unlimited, there is no longer any individualistic ethic. 

2 H. M. 1224-5; Fr. 465; Hek. 1227. 

8 Fr. 298, 1. 2. 5.70. 298; 809. 

4 Ib. 364, ll. 19-20. 6 Jb. 342. 

7 Euripides calls such friends φίλοι σαφεῖς (Or. 1155; H. M. 55; Fr. 928), ἀληθεῖς 
(Hik. 867; Hipp. 927), ὀρθῶς (Andr. 377; H. M. 56). 

8 Or. 727-8; 804-6; 1155-7; H. M. 1425-6; Fr. 7; 928. 

9 El. 605-7; Hik. 867-8; Fr. 736. 

10 In Or. 793-4 Pylades holds the same belief toward the frenzy of Orestes. 

1 H. M. 1394 ff. 


40 THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


particularly good poetry, it has enough ethical import to justify its 
quotation in full: 


φίλος yap jv μοι, καὶ μ᾽ ἔρως ἕλοι ποτὲ * 


οὐκ εἰς τὸ μῶρον, οὐδέ μ᾽ εἰς Κύπριν τρέπων. 

ἀλλ᾽ ἔστι δή τις ἄλλος ἐν βροτοῖς ἔρως 

ψυχῆς δικαίας σὠφρονός τε κἀγαθῆς. 

καὶ χρῆν δὲ τοῖς βροτοῖσιν τόνδ᾽ εἶναι νόμον, 

τῶν εὐσεβούντων οἵτινές γε σώφρονες 

ἐρᾶν, Κύπριν δὲ τὴν Διὸς χαίρειν ἐᾶν. 

(Fragment 342) 

The Aristotelian friend is part of the self-centred ethical system; but 
in this Euripidean fragment, and in the lover-like comradeship of Orestes 
and Pylades, of Theseus and Herakles, a new element has crept in, too 
strong for “system,” an element which threatens the clarity of the 
Euripidean logic with the colouring of a fatal emotion. 

It will be noted that in such a form of individualism there is no room 
for the rather self-destructive enlargement which classes altruism as 
a higher form of selfishness. Euripides could not logically claim that 
self-sacrifice was also κατὰ φύσιν and therefore commendable, any more 
than, for example, a gardener could claim that the extermination of the 
tare to give soil to the corn was for the tare κατὰ φύσιν. As long as immor- 
tality and a higher, external moral sanction are not involved, the in- 
dividual is to be considered entirely as a material manifestation, here 
and now, closely analogous to any other living product of nature, whose 
end, and therefore, in a thinking being, whose “duty,” is realization 
of form (in the sense of complete attainment of εἶδος). Self-sacrifice 
is in consequence eminently παρὰ φύσιν. 

We must constantly remember this distinction between ancient 
naturalistic individualism and certain modern rehabilitations which 
can conveniently merge the individual into a “higher self’’ by a pleas- 
antly indefinite transition. If we insist on our rather humble analogies 
and argue as if man were merely an intelligent political animal, akin 
to other natural forms, these rather insidious sophistications lose their 
force, while we ourselves shall be closer to the attitude of mind of 
Sokrates, with his constant adjudication of ethical problems by con- 
crete analogies in the lowly trades and crafts, and of Aristotle, whose 
pregnant use of such concepts as ἔργον, τέλος, δύναμις, and εἶδος, I have 
throughout tried to copy. 


22 The reading is corrupt. 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 41 


In friendships of this extreme and beautiful sort, then, the ethical 
postulate is in danger. Curiously enough in that other, and to our 
thought more intense, emotional relation, the love of man and woman, 
this is seldom true. Making all allowance for ethopoiia, for the diffi- 
culty of distinguishing the dramatis personae from Euripides’ own 
utterance, such is the consistency of sentiment that it seems hard to re- 
sist the conclusion that Euripides looked on sexual love as a violent and 
irrational thing,’® an intruder into an otherwise ordered world. It is 
mere folly: 

τὰ Mpa yap πάντ᾽ ἐστὶν ᾿Αφροδίτη βροτοῖς, 
καὶ τοὐνομ᾽ ὀρθῶς ἀφροσύνης ἄρχει θεᾶς. 
(Tro. 989-90) 


Running counter to that great system of morality and justice which 
Euripides calls “the gods,” Aphrodite cannot be herself a god. She is 
something even more powerful. She is quietly excluded from the 
ethical system as an irrational and uncontrollable factor. 

But this other love, that bound Pylades and Orestes, caught the 
Greek imagination where the more ordinary love of man and woman 
failed. Too sane and wise to be irrational, too abiding to be fortuitous 
or merely fleeting and uncontrollable, it demanded with full right a 
place in the Greek ethical system, and such a place the self-centred creed, 
with which we have been dealing, was unable to give. 

Love in still another form impressed Euripides with its strength and 
its beauty. “To all men, children are their very soul,’ says Androm- 
ache.” It is not a question of the pleasure which they give us. Al- 
though to some they are more to be desired than wealth or kingly 
power,’® others may judge themselves happier without children, for 
they may sicken and die or grow into evil ways and, all in all, cause 
only care and grief.” But virtuous and wicked men alike love their 
children; Τ᾽ and there is nothing more intimate than the bond between 
parents and their children,”’ nor any sweeter love than that of mother 
and child.2? And out of the strength of such love comes self-sacrifice, 
the obliteration of the individual for the sake of another. 

In the Herakleidai, Makaria dies of her own will, in order to save her 
brothers. She justifies her act by a long speech, claiming that, first, 
justice demands her sacrifice; Marathon has received her and her 


Pre 139. 1 Andr. 418. 

14 Hipp. 359-60. 16 Ton 485-91. 

17 Chorus in Med. 1090-1115; Admetos in Alk. 879-88; Fr. 575. 

18 H. M. 634-6. 19 Fr. 333. 20 Fr. 360. 


42 THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


brothers as suppliants at the risk of its prosperity and its freedom, 
hence she must take equal dangers on herself to save Marathon; 
secondly, not to die would show lack of courage and bring shame upon 
her; thirdly, the alternative, life, is not preferable, since she would 
not attain happiness;** and therefore, in final conclusion, it is better 
for her to die with honour, since to live is shameful.” In all this in- 
human reasoning, how the ethical logician is trying to find a place for 
self-sacrifice in his ““system!’’ Makaria may make this forensic speech; 
yet she acts through impulse and for love of her brothers, not through 
logic or for reason. Euripides admits as much. He makes Makaria 
realise that the deed, to be good, must come from love and not through 
any restraint. When Iolaos suggests that she should draw lots with her 
sisters to determine the victim, she refuses, and even intimates that 
should she be commanded by the fall of the lot, she would resist such 
a death; for it would resemble an execution more than a deed of virtue.” 
And thereby she shows that her harangue was a judicial gloss, hiding 
her true motive of voluntary self-devotion to save those whom she 
loves. In that admission, the individualistic creed of ethics breaks down. 
It is not shame and honour that are the motives. The individual is no 
longer consulting the interests of his own harmonious and complete 
self-development. But to do so was the fundamental demand of the 
system which we have been developing. 

There are numerous other cases in Euripides, for the situation makes 
a great appeal to the dramatic instinct and that human sympathy 
which a great tragic poet possesses. Andromache is unhesitatingly 
prepared to die in order to save her son Molossos.”° Hekabe wishes to 
take the place of her daughter whom the Greeks have voted for sacri- 
fice to the shade of Achilles.” Alkestis, dying that her husband may 
live, is a familiar figure in all men’s minds.* So, too, Iphigeneia’s sacri- 
fice is voluntary. When the plot becomes involved, so that apparently 
bloodshed and intestine strife must break out in the Greek camp at 
Aulis, Iphigeneia suddenly claims her right to die in behalf of the 
Greek cause against Troy. She has been weeping and lamenting in 
childish fashion: all at once, she understands her duty and her privilege, 
— “To all Greece didst thou bear me!” 59 


1 Her. 503-10. 4 Ib. 525-8. 27 Hek. 385-7. 


22 Ib. 515-19. 5 70. 547-51. 
28. Tb. 520-4. °6 Andr. 406-18. 


28 Cf. also the more difficult situation in the long fragment from the Erechtheus 
quoted by Lycurgus (Kata Leokr. 100), where the mother gives her son to die to 
save her country. 20 T, Aj 1386: 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 43 


So far does the power of affection reach, that even where nothing is 
gained, the sacrifice is offered. In the Helena, husband and wife, 
precariously reunited, vow to die together if both may not live: 


EX. wWatw, θανόντος σοῦ τόδ᾽ ἐκλείψειν φάος. 


Με. κἀγὼ στερηθεὶς σοῦ τελευτήσειν βίον. 
(Hel. 839-40) 


In the Orestes, Pylades insists on dying if his friend Orestes must, how- 
ever needless the sacrifice seems.*? His, also, are the stirring lines: 


μήθ᾽ αἷμά μου δέξαιτο κἀρπιμον πέδον, 
μὴ λαμπρὸς αἰθήρ, εἴ σ᾽ ἔγὼ προδούς ποτε 
ἐλευθερώσας τοὐμὸν ἀπολίποιμι σέ. 
(Or. 1086-8) 


I have tried to show that the Greek individualistic ethic is incom- 
patible with certain emotions which we class among the higher Chris- 
tian virtues, and that precisely these emotions occur in Euripides. 
When, as in the cases just cited, life is freely and gladly given for another’s 
sake, not out of selfish interest or a weighing of For and Against, but 
out of love, whether of country or of wife or of friend, the fundamental 
ethical thesis has been violated. The individual proceeds to efface his 
entire existence, and, with it, all possibility of further realising his 
spiritual and bodily powers. It seems to me a significant comment 
on all individualistic ethics that even in so logical and successful an 
exemplification as that of fourth-century Greek morality, though the 
philosopher could be self-consistent, the more human tragedian — for 
all his sense for logic — was driven into violating the cardinal principle 
of his ethical system. 

This observation has its bearing on modern conditions of thought 
and feeling, as I intend to show. But before sketching the change of 
attitude in ethics since Aristotle, I wish to add at least a brief note of 
comparison between that philosopher and Euripides. It is almost a 
commonplace of Aristotelian criticism to scent an odour of the comic 
stage in the ethical characters so drastically and dramatically portrayed 
in the central books of the Nicomachean Ethics. I offer the general 
tenor of this essay as an indication that Aristotle’s total indebtedness 
to the stage is still more thoroughgoing. A system such as Euripides 
held needs only to be subjected to the rigorous formalising of the Ar- 
istotelian logic — and the Nicomachean Ethics, as Burnet has shown,*! 


30 Or. 1069-72. 31 Τῇ his edition of the Ethics. 


At THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


is full of logical formalism — and to be interpreted in the light of 
the Aristotelian psychology of conduct, to produce almost the entire 
fabric of the Nicomachean Ethics.** There is the same fundamental 
assumption —a monstrous non sequitur of optimism— that, because the 
fulfilment of function is the aim of every organism considered as part 
of Nature, therefore it is also the aim or end of man as a self-con- 
scious self-directed individual, and thus the best thing for him to do; 
and being best, it is thus equivalent to the Highest Good. The εὐδαιμονία 
of Book I is Aeschylean-Herodotean preaching on the transiency of 
prosperity, the unreliability of τὰ ἔξω ἀγαθά reconciled as far as possible 
with the equation of right action to action in the norm of Nature. 
The immediately following books contain the explanation of the mechan- 
ism of such action — the psychological mediation between the intellec- 
tual act of apprehending the general ethical law and the practical act 
of conduct in the concrete. This psychological mediation effected by 
the doctrine of προαίρεσις, and the divisions of the sentient activities, 
could not, I admit, have been found ready-made in the Attic drama. 
But it is not part of the moral theory, so much as of the scientific analy- 
sis of the mechanism of behaviour. The more properly speculative dis- 
tinction between ἕξις and ἐνέργεια, however, is already in Euripides; 
at least, the equivalent doctrine that there is no well-being without 
well-doing seems clear in the following fragment from the Antiope: 


εἰ δ᾽ εὐτυχῶν Tis Kal βίον κεκτημένος 
μηδὲν δόμοισι τῶν καλῶν πειράσεται, 
ἔγὼ μὲν οὔποτ᾽ αὐτὸν ὄλβιον καλῶ, 


φύλακα δὲ μᾶλλον χρημάτων εὐδαίμονα. 


Is not this precisely the point of Aristotle’s definition of Eudaimonia 
in Book I? Following this psychological treatise, come the practical 


82 On the other hand, the examination in this thesis has afforded hardly any 
Platonic doctrine. Is not this merely another indication that Plato was a highly 
original (or, at any rate, a highly specialised) thinker, whereas Aristotle was a school- 
logician and analytic encyclopaedist working from the normal viewpoint of the 
ordinary educated Athenian ? 

33 Cf. with Aristotle’s account, the following Euripidean treatment of Eudai- 
monia: It is transient and uncertain (Herakl. 609-18, Hipp. 981-2), and we can call 
no man happy before death (Andr. 100-2, Herakl. 865-6). No man is completely 
happy (Med. 1224-30; Fr. 46; 196). None are happy without aid of the gods 
(Fr. 149; Her. 609), and none are happy unless they are prosperous. For this pros- 
perity (ra ἔξω ἀγαθά), children are necessary (Andr. 418-20) and wealth is necessary 
(Erech. 16-17). Without opportunity it is impossible to perfect and develop one- 
self (Fr. 738). Finally, happiness is essentially an activity, for there is no well-being 
without well-doing (Fr. 198). 


τ δν χν...»0 


> 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 45 


rules for right conduct, centred and contained in the doctrine of the 
Mean, — the very rule-of-life which has been brought out so vividly 
by our study of Euripides. Then follow the “pre-Theophrastean” 
characters, vivid attempts at ethopovia, and redolent of practical play- 
writing. The exhaustive treatment of justice in Book V echoes mathe- 
matical theorists and is not exemplified in Euripides; but just because 
it is so largely a mere practical calculus for the juryman, its purely 
ethical content is slight. The discussion of wisdom, pleasure, and 
incontinence is a more purely speculative heritage from the Sophists 
and the Academy. The nature of friendship is already in Euripides in 
strikingly Aristotelian form. 

I conclude, therefore, that we estimate Aristotle’s Ethics wrongly 
if we treat it as moral speculation. The morality came to his hand 
from the Sophists and the stage. Out of it, he made a practical exposi- 
tion of human behaviour. The Nicomachean Ethics is not a treatise 
on Duty or Obligation or Moral Sanction, but a text-book of psychology 
with practical hints on conduct. 


POSTSCRIPT ON INDIVIDUALISTIC SYSTEMS 


Tue Greek civilisation perfected itself within rather narrow geo- 
graphical bounds. In the fourth century before Christ it began to affect 
non-Greek people. Alexander the Great gave a whirlwind impulse to 
a movement already begun. By the third century it was widely dis- 
seminated through the Mediterranean lands. In extending its appli- 
cation it naturally was modified to meet non-Greek conditions. Its 
art and literature and material code of life met with severe change, 
but endured the test triumphantly; but its ethic failed. At least, it 
failed in that form which the Athenian drama had taught and Aristotle 
had systematised. City-life grew enormously in these Hellenistic days. 
The great towns, like magnets, drew people from the farm and its empty 
routine to the energetic idleness of the splendid city-streets. The ex- 
tremes of society worked ever further apart. The idle rich and the mob- 
swelling poor now first appear as outstanding social factors. With the 
increased disparity of level, luxury and want, enjoyment and misery 
are more emphatic and more prominent. The poor and wretched cry 
out that life is a succession of insupportable evils. The rich revel in 
goldsmith’s ware and marble-coated houses, in feasting and fine apparel. 
What meaning for either of them has the old fifth-century advice to 
develop the Self harmoniously and evenly in order to realize all the 
inherent potentialities of the organic life which Nature gave us? Es- 
pecially to the ill-clothed and ill-fed rabble, this would seem a high- 
flown and senseless creed. Something else was needed; Stoicism and 
Epicureanism swept the Hellenistic world. The one thought life full 
of evil and counselled a high fortitude as man’s best armour. The other 
saw that enjoyment was still possible and counselled gathering the 
roses while we may. Whatever the original philosophy of these creeds, 
this seems to have been their practical application. In this form they 
fitted their world and gained their votaries. But both talk much of 
φύσις, especially Stoicism (though neither can gladly and completely 
acquiesce in it); and both must be studied genetically as divergent 
growths out of the ethical system which Euripides exemplifies. 

This earlier ethic hinged on self-assertion. It was applicable to a 
prosperous community, an aristocracy whose material needs were guar- 


anteed by slavery. The doctrine had no application to this slave-class 
46 


THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 47 


itself and was in fact never extended to them even in the broadest 
theorising. When an ethic was needed which would apply to both 
classes — and for that matter to all mankind—the Greek system 
failed. The necessity of that failure is foreshadowed in Euripides. 
Constant preoccupation with tragic situations developed in him a sym- 
pathy for the unfortunate and an understanding of their suffering which 
is completely lacking in the theorising self-absorption of Aristotle. 
From the poet we learn what we should never have guessed from the 
philosopher, that the Greek ethic, though logically consistent for or- 
dinary Greek conditions, in extreme human crises breaks down. An 
ethical study of Euripides is consequently of considerable interest 
because it defines the range of conditions within which an indi- 
vidualistic ethic can be self-consistent and satisfactory. Now, many 
of these conditions, after being lost in Hellenistic, Roman, and 
Christian times, have reappeared in the very recent world of to-day. 
For the first time in centuries, we can apply the lesson of Greek ethics 
to ourselves. 

As I understand the matter, a fundamental difference between Greek 
. and Christian ethics derives from the source of moral sanction. Chris- 
tian dogma, I presume, reflects the legal tone of Roman civil adminis- 
tration and Hebraic religious law: it is essentially imposed, like a corpus 
juridicum, by an authority external to the individual. Christ and 
Caesar are parallel manifestations, to each of whom must be rendered 
what is his due and whatever is demanded by the laws whose adminis- 
tration ultimately pinnacles in them. In Christian law the emphasis 
shifts from this world to the world hereafter. There is thus a marked 
difference from Greek ethical thought. 

In general, I should formulate the matter thus: Where there is 
the belief in a personal creative Deity and in individual immortality, 
there must arise an external non-earthly sanction; without these be- 
liefs, the interest must centre in the individual, in the living intelligent 
Being, here and now. In the latter case, in a complex community, 
Hedonism or Stoicism arises as a personal guide to life, with Utilitarian- 
ism, perhaps, as a more impersonal theoretical system; while in a closed 
aristocracy or a socialistic community, the Euripidean and Aristotelian 
Individualism will make their appeal. 

Now that modern wide-spread prosperity has removed much of the 
need for self-suppression, a material condition reappears wherein each 
may to some extent live for himself and develop his own faculties to the 
utmost. Harmonious and complete development of the various physical 


48 THE ETHICS OF EURIPIDES 


and intellectual faculties once more becomes the aim in education. 
Hence also there is an ever more marked wane of sympathy with some 
of the fundamental teachings of Christian dogma, just because self- 
development implies self-assertion and an individualistic rather than 
altruistic attitude. In political as well as pedagogical theory the same 
trend is apparent. Socialism, in its general tenets, makes unbroken 
progress. It aims at an increased efficiency in the community, and, for 
its ideal, would give every individual the opportunity to realise his 
highest possibilities in the social fabric. What is this but the great 
doctrine of Greek ethics applied to a more complex community ? Under 
a completely triumphant socialism — if the realisation be practicable — 
our attitude would approximate that of the Greeks; provided that we 
had sufficient sense for form and balance to keep us from the degenera- 
tion of excesses. To keep this sense alert and operative was, as we have 
seen, the main occupation and value of Greek ethical teaching. 

Obviously, self-development can be easily confused with self-inter- 
estedness. <A self-centred attitude may degenerate into greed and 
callow selfishness. Its true character as a high moral system can only 
be maintained by a people who realise intuitively that perfection does 
not mean the quantitatively greatest, but a difficult and rather subtle 
balance between the Too Much and the Too Little. Surely Euripides 
realised that for the Greeks this dangerous mistake was possible. Else 
why, with all his bold innovations, did he cling so strongly to the old 
dramatic theme and show, as rigorously as Aeschylus himself, that 
every man however wealthy or well-born, if he confuse self-development 
with self-aggrandisement at the expense of others, is punished by the 
great law of universal justice with which the gods are merged and into 
which they disappear. 


VITA 


I was born in Cotuit, Massachusetts, August 5, 1889. 

I was educated at Trinity School, New York City; Columbia Col- 
lege, from which I received the degree of A.B., in 1909; University of 
Oxford, England, from which I received the degree of B.A., in 1911, 
and of M.A., in 1914, having been appointed Rhodes Scholar from the 
State of New York for the years 1908-1911, and having resided at 
Oxford during those years as a member of Balliol College. I was ap- 
pointed Drisler Fellow in Classical Philology at Columbia University 
' for the years 1911-12 and 1912-13, spending the second year abroad 
as resident member of the American School of Classical Studies at 
Athens. 


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